


The Story of Slepnir

by alatarmaia4



Series: Vessel 'Verse [6]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: (the sex stuff is not so much implied as stated that it happens but with zero details), Gen, also a character goes through a pregnancy, no romance but there's implied sexual activity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 05:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9804848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alatarmaia4/pseuds/alatarmaia4
Summary: Loki's children aren't what many people assume them to be, from their portrayals in old myths and legends. But it makes one wonder, how much of the old stories are really true? Well, most of them are true - up to a point.For example, the story of Loki and Svaðilfari - oh, you know it already? It's certainly one of the popular ones. But the whole story is a lot longer than most people think, and depending on how you look at it, a little kinder towards Loki. If this is the true one - and don't ask me if it is; stories are always true and never true at the same time - I can't imagine he was pleased at the common version.Alright, alright, I'll start. It begins in Asgard, a long time ago...





	1. The Giant, the Wall, and the Horse

**Author's Note:**

> HEYO, BACKSTORY TIME!
> 
> So if you follow @thevesselverse on tumblr, you already know I was planning this story! My beta reader finished (yes, I have one of those temporarily, it was a marvel and I should do it more often) and so here it is, in all its glory.
> 
> The title is mostly for alliterative purposes - really, this is the story of how Slepnir was born, which you already know if you're familiar with the story of Loki and Svaðilfari. If you're not, you're going to be! Sorta. So Slepnir himself, of course, doesn't show up until the end. I have attempted to portray a pregnancy realistically while also making sure it's not too graphic, so the tag is mostly just so people know it happens. 
> 
> There will be Norse words in the story - hover over them for translations! There will be notes on mythology and culture at the end, so if you're interested in that take a look at the author's note when you're done.
> 
> Enjoy!

    In hindsight, allowing the giant inside Asgard at all had been a bad idea.

    He’d been persuasive, certainly, and not so easily recognizable as a giant; he was closer in size to Loki. Yet Oðin had to have known him for what he was as soon as he’d laid eyes on the visitor. Such a thing as size or clever words could not fool the Allfather easily.

But the giant had managed to talk his way in, and his offer had been attractive enough to make most of the gods sit up and pay attention. Including Loki.

    A high wall was what he wanted to give them, strong and thick, to keep Asgard safe from anyone and anything that wished them ill. It was something the Æsir were in need of, what with giants crossing the river Ífingr into Asgard whenever they pleased, or so it seemed to the gods. The problem was his price: the sun, the moon, and Freya.

    Freya had refused outright, as soon as the doors had closed on the giant. Even all the gods assembled couldn’t change her mind - and, well, she had good reason to not want to. Even without mentioning how recently her husband Oð had gone missing, who would want a giant as a replacement?

    Loki had often privately pondered whether or not he should point out the hypocrisy of that, since so many gods had taken Jötun wives or mistresses, but there was no point in making them angry. They might just toss _him_ out there to convince the giant to lower his price, and that was not what Loki intended to spend his day doing. So he said, instead,

    “Why not make it impossible for him to receive his prize?”

    When the gods turned to look at him, puzzled and curious, Loki ignored them and spoke to Oðin alone. “Tell him he can have what he asks for-”

    “ _You little-_ ” Freya snarled.

   “-but give him an impossible deadline,” Loki finished. Freya stopped midsentence, still sour-looking but marginally less murderous.

    “And leave us with a half-finished wall?” Thor scoffed. “That would be worse than no wall at all.”

    “Half-finished would protect _some,_ if not all, of Asgard,” Freyr pointed out. “Not worse, but still not as good as a whole wall.”

    “Then judge the deadline carefully,” Loki said, again to Oðin; and the rest of the gods quieted down, because none of them wanted to be the one to say that they did not trust Oðin to make a wise decision.

    “And what if he has help?” Bragi questioned nervously. “What if he brings other giants to his aid?”

    “I’d think Heimdall would be able to give us a _little_ warning,” Loki said, with a grin, but no one else laughed. Heimdall looked a little annoyed at being singled out.

    “Warning, yes,” Heimdall said. “But not prevent them from coming in, or else we’d be accused of cheating him, and then what?”

    “Well, I don’t know,” Loki retorted, exasperated. Why did it fall to _him_ to come up with a plan? “Tell him he can only use the horse he rode in on for help.” _That_ got a few snorts from up and down the table. Freya, however, still looked steaming mad; and Oðin was still quiet and thoughtful.

    Their _þing _ didn’t end there, of course. Everyone had their own ideas about the deadline, or about whether Loki had the right idea, and whether they shouldn’t just build their own wall and not trust this rather giantish fellow who none of them had ever seen before. There were a hundred suggestions made, and a hundred suggestions picked apart and shot down.

    it was Oðin who made the final decision, in the end; and Oðin agreed with Loki, to Loki’s smug satisfaction. The giant had until winter’s end to finish his wall, if he wanted his prize - and no help, except for the horse.

    Loki lingered, when the rest of the Æsir had dispersed and Thor had gone off to tell the giant their conditions.

    “A short timeline, for someone who wants a mostly-finished wall,” he said. “That is, of course, assuming any of us actually intended to pay his price.”

    “When one is dealing with giants,” Oðin said, giving Loki a very pointed look (he was good at those, even with only one eye), “I have learned through experience that it is best to assume that they will trick you.”

    It had seemed as though they’d worked it out pretty well. There was no way he could finish in time, building a wall around _all_ of Asgard by himself with only his horse to fetch rocks to build with. Oh, they’d sworn that he would be safe in Asgard while he worked, and that they’d keep their end of the bargain, but no one had really believed they’d _need_ to.

    They _really_ hadn’t counted on the horse.

    Svaðilfari was - well. There were many things that could be said about the giant’s horse, most of them impolite and accompanied by sideways glares cast at Loki, if he was in the vicinity. Loki could guess what they thought; that he was in league with the giant, that he’d known about the horse’s strange abilities, that he’d somehow messed up their chances on purpose.

    “They’re so quick to blame me for things that haven’t even happened yet,” he complained to Oðin, who did not seem to be at all sympathetic. “It’s because they’re all bored from being kept inside for so long, I’ll bet.”

    “And once winter is over, we shall see whether you are received in a more friendly manner,” Oðin said. Loki huffed, giving him a dirty look.

    “He _won’t_ finish. There’s too much for him to do, even if he does have plenty of stone. Svaðilfari can only do so much to help.”

    Ha! If only.

    “Three days until winter ends and all he’s got left is the _gate,_ ” Tyr snapped.

    “And that’s _my_ fault?” Loki wrenched his arm, at last, out of Tyr’s grip. They’d dragged him all the way back up to Oðin’s hall. Oðin had barely even looked up when Thor had slammed the doors open.

    “It was on your advice that we agreed to this plan!” Thor rounded on him. “ _Your_ idea about the horse-”

    “That was a _joke_ , for the Norns’ sake!” Loki cried. “You thought it was funny, too! Do you truly think I want to give him any of the things he’s asked for?”

    “You’re the kind to think it would be amusing and then regret it when the Nine Realms lost all their light,” Tyr growled. “You and him come from the same place.”

    “Oh, how could I have forgotten that all Jötnar are mystically connected and sworn never to oppose each other!” Loki yelled. “Don’t act so stupid, Tyr, you do it so often it’s gotten boring.”

    “Insults aren’t going to save you,” Thor said, one hand on his hammer like he thought Loki might try to run away. “Joke or not, this was _your idea,_ Loki. Someone has to stop that giant.”

    “Why don’t _you,_ then?” Loki countered. “Do you not think yourself up to the challenge?”

    “I could kill ten times as many giants as him!” Thor shouted, temper fraying. “But because of _your_ solution to this problem, I have sworn not to harm him! I am no oathbreaker!”

    “And you think I am?” Loki scoffed, trying to disguise his nervousness.

    “You’re clever,” Freya said acidly. “You had _better_ find a way, or else _I_ will find a way to make sure you won’t be able to enjoy the consequences for long.”

    “That’s just unnecessary,” Loki muttered, averting his gaze from Freya’s. Why did it always come to death threats?

    “Not if it gets you to try,” Freya said.

    Loki was, if anything, very good at self-preservation, and his self-preservation was telling him not to argue with a lot of angry gods.

    But he couldn’t fight the giant, even if he hadn’t sworn not to, and he couldn’t harm the giant’s horse, because that would infringe on his work too obviously. Subtlety was the only way he’d be able to get around the oath they’d all sworn.

    Svaðilfari was the key. Without him, the work would go much slower; and slowing him down would stall the giant for at least as long as three days. He could not finish an entire gate in three days on his own.

    But there were not a lot of foolproof ways to lure a horse away from its master without the master noticing something was up. Loki had experience tricking men and gods, but that was because he usually had some inkling of how their minds worked. The same could not really be said for horses. To be sure, there were _some_ basic factors that were similar between the two groups, but that couldn’t be relied on. A horse wouldn’t pursue a woman the same way a man would.

    Loki paused, and backtracked on that thought. It couldn’t work in the usual way, but _maybe_...

    He knew the horsemaster, vaguely, in the way that everybody knew everybody else in Asgard; it was too small for anyone to go unnoticed or unrecognized. Auðunar was good with horses, and that was the extent of Loki’s knowledge. He didn’t need to know any more than that; what he knew now suited his purposes.

    If his purposes also involved changing his shape to that of a woman, that was his business (and if his business was going to involve persuasion, he might as well enjoy himself doing it).

    It also involved a little more than just the addition - or vanishing - of certain body parts. Loki had to change his face (not just shave his beard, but physically alter some features) so that he would not be easily recognizable, and other little things like eye color or skin tone mattered as well. But Auðunar had no reason to recognize him like this; Oðin would have, and perhaps Freya, but not someone who Loki barely ever saw.

    Auðunar did not notice him for a moment or two; he was busy with a horse that Loki thought might have been Viðarr’s. When he did look up, Loki smiled, making sure to keep it small and demure and not in the least smirky. Auðunar stood up a little straighter.

    “Sorry,” Loki said. “I just - I’d always wanted to come by to see the horses. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

    “You’re not,” Auðunar said, putting down the grooming brush. “I’m almost done.” Loki would have smiled wider, if it wouldn’t have given the game away. Show a man a pretty lady and he’d immediately forget what he was doing.

    “That’s kind of you,” Loki said, and brushed his hair out of his face. He’d considered whether or not to leave his hair its usual shade, but he’d turned his skin darker to imitate a more Vanir ancestry; eventually, he’d settled on a subtler shade of reddish brown.

    “You like horses?” Auðunar asked. “Do you ride?”

    “Sometimes. Not as often as I’d like.” Loki made sure to eye the horse appreciatively. “What’s his name?”

    “Flotavindr. He’s a fast horse, not easily frightened. Lucky for me,” Auðunar joked. “The more nervous ones are more likely to kick me in the face if I do something unexpected to them.”

    “It’s a more dangerous job than I thought, then,” Loki laughed, because he was clearly expected to be amused.

    Auðunar shrugged, still smiling crookedly. He was clearly trying to _look_ like he wasn’t bragging. “There’s no swords involved, but a hoof to the face isn’t pleasant.”

    “Have you been kicked often?”

    “A few times, when I was younger and cockier than I could back up with action.”

    “And now?” Loki leaned on the low wall of the stable, which had the added affect of making him lean closer.

    “Never,” Auðunar said, grin widening slightly. “Would you like to come in?”

    “Oh, I shouldn’t-”

    “I insist. Some people don’t appreciate horses properly; it’s rare to meet someone who likes them for who they are and not what they do.”

    “Well...if you say so.”

    As Auðunar let him in, unsubtly eyeing his chest, it was much harder to transform a triumphant grin into a more demure smile.

    It wasn’t difficult, from there on; few among the gods would be caught dead saying ‘no’ to a woman offering sex. Granted, Auðunar also thought it would be easier to simply retreat to the hayloft, but he improved himself in Loki’s eyes by obtaining a blanket for the two of them to use. Loki had _not_ been looking forward to straw in uncomfortable places.

    The act itself was probably the most pleasant thing Loki had done all day. Auðunar was not exactly hard on the eyes. Afterwards, he had to mentally wrench himself back on task, and laid back with a sigh.

    “Something wrong?” Auðunar asked. At least he’d been able to pick up on how it was not quite a sigh of pleasure, Loki thought wryly.

    “No,” Loki said haltingly, and looked away. “Well - it’s just the whole thing with the wall.”

    “Ah,” Auðunar sighed in understanding. “That’s not so bad, really.”

    “If you say so,” Loki muttered, trying to sound dispirited while mentally pondering whether or not to put his clothes back on. He was getting goosebumps all over, and he didn’t want to lose track of the dress when he’d gone through so much trouble to obtain it. Hopefully Frigg wouldn’t notice it missing. “Though - the sun, the moon, and Freya?”

    “It will work out,” Auðunar said, with the certainty of someone who did not interact with the Æsir very much outside handling their horses. “I’ve heard they’ve put Loki on the job.”

    “Oh, Loki,” Loki scoffed.

    “He lives here, too. I’m sure he doesn’t want the sun or moon or Freya gone any more than anyone else does,” Auðunar said.

    “Right,” Loki said, in a manner that hopefully suggested that he was entirely unconvinced. It seemed to work, because Auðunar propped himself up on one arm.

    “There’s nothing else we can do about it,” he said softly, probably meaning to be reassuring.

    “Why not?” Loki said. He meant it; but he affected a tone like he was half-joking. “You could just send a mare in heat out there, and I’m sure that magic horse would run right off after her.”

    Auðunar was silent for a moment, and when Loki looked up at him, he looked thoughtful.

    “You don’t really have a mare in heat, do you?” Loki asked, allowing himself to sound a little excited.

    “One,” Auðunar said, “but there would be no way to get her outside the wall.”

    “Oh, I could do that,” Loki said carelessly, and then clamped his mouth shut; but he’d already said it, he couldn’t take the words back now. Auðunar looked at him with interest.

    “You could?” He asked, clearly skeptical.

    “I-” Loki looked aside awkwardly. “I know a little magic. Most of us do.” He did not specify who ‘us’ was - hopefully Auðunar would assume he meant the Vanir, and given that the only female Vanir anyone really knew was Freya...

    “Oh,” Auðunar said, sounding almost excited. “Do you mean invisibility? Or is there some other spell?”

    “It’s a secret,” Loki said, and winked at him, then pretended to be suddenly shy, like a girl who had realized she’d overstepped her boundaries. “Do you think we can truly do this?”

    “Why not?” Auðunar said, smiling like they were sharing a joke. Loki smiled more hesitantly. “But it might be too dangerous for you.”

    Loki bit his lip, like he was thinking about it.

    “Maybe I’ll ask Freya,” he said. “She’d help, wouldn’t she? I doubt she wants to be married off to some old giant.”

    “And you stay safe,” Auðunar said. It was kind of sweet, if a little condescending.

    “Of course,” Loki said, smiling softly again. “And you-”

    “I’ll leave the mare near the gate,” he said. “Not too close to be noticeable, or heard; but you’ll find her easily enough.”

    “Oh, _thank_ you.” Loki stroked a hand idly over his chest. “This means a lot to me, really.”

    “It’s alright-”

    “No,” Loki said, “ _really,_ ” and sat up to straddle Auðunar’s waist, because while he was here he might as well have a little more fun before he set out to trick a giant. He didn’t take too long, though, and soon enough he was sneaking off and bidding Auðunar farewell with a nervous smile and a quick kiss on the cheek.

    He had a time limit to meet, after all.

    Auðunar kept his end of the bargain. The mare was sizeable, but luckily Loki had little difficulty getting her past the mostly-finished wall and out into the forest where the giant and Svaðilfari went to gather material. Everything was covered in snow, and so Loki had to carefully wipe their footprints from behind them, making the compacted snow rise back up to fill the foot- and hoofprints.

    He’d kept his disguise, just in case he ended up being spotted, but so far his caution hadn’t been necessary. So far.

    Loki crouched low to the ground behind a copse of trees, keeping a tight hold on the mare’s lead, and waited.

    The giant was not easily missed, when he did come, and neither was his horse. Svaðilfari was larger than Loki had thought he would be - but then, Loki had been observing from a distance. He also came towards them faster than Loki had anticipated. They were only here to gather material, not to build, what was the hurry?

    But then, every second mattered to them, if the giant wanted to get his payment. And every second mattered to Loki, who counted them carefully, then snapped his fingers.

    The mare’s lead loosened and fell off. Loki slapped her on the rump and then immediately ducked down again; the mare whinnied and was off like a shot, already nervous from the unfamiliar surroundings and the magic he’d placed on her earlier.

    Loki peered out from behind the trees, just far enough to see the two horses. The mare skidded to a halt when she crossed Svaðilfari’s path, and then scrambled to race off again. Loki silently cursed; he’d hoped she’d stop for longer, so that Svaðilfari could get a good whiff of her and realize that she was in heat. He had to hope it had been long enough.

Svaðilfari had stopped in his tracks, and if a horse could look taken aback Loki thought he did. One second ticked by, and Loki was nearly at the point of holding his breath. Then the horse seemed to make up his mind, or realize what Loki had hoped he would realize, and went haring off after the mare, so fast he was nearly a blur.

    The giant roared in anger, shouting Svaðilfari’s name, but he was already long gone. Loki grinned. Hopefully the giant would waste all his time looking for his horse; if not, he had barely two and a half days left, and much still to finish at the wall.

    Still, Loki wasn’t going back to Asgard yet. He’d spend a little while in Miðgarð, and let everybody cool down and forget that Loki had ever proposed an idea that had turned out so badly. Maybe they’d forget that he had been the one to fix it, too, or at least not really speak of it; but that was how things always seemed to turn out. He could live with it.

    Loki slipped out of Asgard and onto the branches of Yggdrasil, and started making his way down.

    He spent an easy few weeks wandering around. There was the question of whether his plan had really worked, but the sun and the moon remained in the sky every day and night, so Loki assumed the giant had been forced to leave Asgard without his prize. Freya must have made it out as well, unless something else happened, but that wasn’t Loki’s business anymore.

   He also kept his disguise, mostly to throw off any Æsir who might be wondering where he was and guess his habits. Also, he liked to be something unexpected, and a not-so-pale woman traveling alone was certainly unexpected most everywhere he went. Loki had started in the far north, and he worked his way down to the south of the land, hopping from village to village and spending a few nights in each place. Hospitality was enough to guarantee him a place to stay anywhere he paused for the night, which was lucky, because even as the seasons edged into summer, he did not find himself wanting to spend as much as one night outside.

    Loki went along like that quite happily, for a while. He changed his skin tone back to its usual paleness after he got tired of being so thoroughly in disguise, and then another week or so passed before he restored his hair to the vibrant red that he had begun to miss. If any gods were on his tail, surely they would have caught up by now.

    When he decided, eventually, that he could probably shift back into a male shape, it did not work quite as he expected.

    As soon as he began to change, something pulled alarmingly, around his stomach; maybe _pulled_ was not the right word, but there was a very strange sensation and pressure and pain, so that Loki reversed the change immediately.

    He would deny he had panicked, if anyone had asked. But it _was_ unnerving. Shapeshifting required not only knowledge of anatomy, but very precise awareness of his own body, and to have his body misbehave on him without warning was an entirely unwelcome feeling.

    Loki had been hiding behind a house in the small village he’d found himself in, and now he leaned back against the wooden wall, splaying one hand over his stomach. He couldn’t be sick; gods did not get sick, and he counted as a god where it mattered. And he hadn’t done anything recently that he could get sick from, anyway.

    Except...

    “Oh,” Loki said, and dug his fingers in a little harder and felt the tiny fluttering spark of something that was _not_ supposed to be there. “Oh, _fuck._ ”

    Loki desperately tried to count how many weeks - or months - it had been since he’d left Asgard - since he’d slept with Auðunar. Was it really that easy for a pregnancy to occur? Sure, the inhabitants of Miðgarð had a lot of kids, but he’d thought that was a survival tactic borne from the death rate, not because it just _happened._

    Loki cursed his own foolishness. He’d never bled once since taking this disguise, but normally he never did, and so he hadn’t noticed when the time never came. And if it had been long enough for his - _condition_ to be noticeable, even just a little, surely that time should have come at least once.

    This changed things. This changed _everything._ He would need to spend far longer away from Asgard, for one; there was no way he was going back like this, to let them see him. Even nine months was too short; for the Norns’ sake, what could he do, just stroll back into Asgard with no beard and a newborn and no explanation?

    Loki did not know of anyone in Asgard who he could call on for aid. He might have tried Freya, before the wall and the giant and Svaðilfari, but now there was no way she would want to even see him, much less _help_.

    Maybe he could - there were methods, even among human women, to get rid of a pregnancy. Herbal concoctions, or a spell, or just some plant that would make one bleed everything out; and yet even as the thought occurred to Loki, he hesitated.

    A child. A real, actual child that was his by blood _and_ by birth. He had relatives, among the Æsir, but all of that was a technicality that rested solely on his friendship and brotherhood with Oðin - brotherhood that had come by choice, not by birth.

    Loki did _not_ think of the Nephilim, because he did not allow himself to - and anyway, why worry about Nephilim when no humans or angels were involved? Whoever this child could become, they would be no different than the rest of Asgard; Æsir, with more Jötun blood than anyone would care to admit to.

    ...He could actually do this. Loki found himself _wanting_ to.

    A year or so away from Asgard should give him the time he needed; he’d need help eventually (a midwife, at least) but for now, he could manage on his own.

    As long as he was careful, there was no reason he couldn’t continue on like he had been.

    Careful, he could do; but Loki had no way of controlling people’s thoughts or actions, and the longer he spent on Miðgarð the more obvious his situation became. People were rude about the silliest things.

    Loki understood where they were coming from, but it was entirely different to be on the receiving end of that kind of vague distaste for a woman with no husband and a just-beginning-to-show child.

    It was also just plain inconvenient, because it often meant that he couldn’t stay anywhere for more than a day or two, as opposed to before. Loki could have played a trick on the villagers, or cast some kind of magic on the worst offenders, but the farther along he got the less he felt up to that kind of thing, not to speak of magic getting more difficult for some reason. And getting up early in the morning to arrange a nasty surprise had been removed entirely from the realm of possibility; he was too tired to bother most days.

    Ugh. Loki felt that the baby had better appreciate all this effort. No one had ever said anything about pregnancy being so unpleasant. Getting sick some mornings, and the growing pressure and lack of space inflicted on various internal body parts, and all sorts of other effects he hadn’t even thought of. He didn’t know how Miðgarðian women could bear doing it so often.

    Loki took to walking on less often traveled paths; if he had to deal with people, then it might as well be only when he was in a village and most likely able to sit down and relax.

    Normally, he did not encounter anyone else while doing so. The beginning of summer, on a narrow path through the woods, seemed to be the time and place for an exception.

    Both of them paused; Loki, and the girl standing a few feet ahead of him. She was young, with dark hair and curious eyes, and was pulling a small goat along on a rope lead. She did not look afraid; but then who would be afraid of what looked like a woman with a small baby bump?

    “Who are you?” She asked.

    “Does it matter?” Loki questioned, somewhat more crossly than he should have; he’d been walking for a long while. The girl blinked in surprise, and tugged her goat a little closer.

“Are you going to town?” The girl asked tentatively.

    “If I’m close to a village, it’s by accident,” Loki said, and then eyed her. “Am I?”

    “It’s that way,” the girl said, and pointed down the road. “Not too far.”

    Loki had no idea why she was being so helpful, but he wasn’t complaining. He didn’t want to walk any longer, especially not when it was warmer out than he liked. Summer had barely started, but he was still irritated and slightly sweaty. And his shoes seemed to have mysteriously sunk, or else pregnancy somehow affected one’s _feet_ too. If he’d seen a chair standing in the middle of the woods, he would have sat down immediately regardless of risk just to give his feet a break.

    “Thanks,” he muttered, striding past her - or he would have, if the girl hadn’t started walking at the same time, keeping several careful paces ahead of him. Loki rolled his eyes at her childishness, but didn’t speed up.

    There was a longhouse near the edge of the forest, not quite inside the village; the girl darted inside the back door, tugging along the reluctant goat. Loki went past it, and was halfway down the hill that sloped down towards the village when he heard “Hold on!”

    Loki turned around.

    There was a woman standing in the doorway of the house, the girl peeking out from behind her.

    “The sun won’t be up for much longer,” the woman called. “Most everyone is having _náttmál _ about now and won’t like to be interrupted.”

    “Except you?” Loki asked shortly. “I’m sure I’ll find an inn.”

    “The only one here is run by Hvaegr’s son,” she said, “and he wouldn’t let you stay without trouble.” The statement was accompanied by a short glance down at Loki’s stomach and the faint bump there.

    “Of course,” Loki muttered, and cursed Hvaegr’s son under his breath. An extra difficulty was the last thing he needed today, when he’d had nowhere to stop the night before.

    “Is there anyone you’re looking to meet?” The woman asked.

    “Why do you care?”

    “I was going to invite you inside, if there wasn’t,” the woman said. Loki paused, and his surprise must have been evident from a distance, because the woman smiled a little. “I have enough food to spare for one more at the table.”

    “...Thank you,” Loki said, and turned back towards the house.

    The longhouse was well built; it had a tall roof and was distinctly warmer inside, and would likely have kept the heat in just as well in colder weather. The goat was in a small pen next to some cows at the far end, but Loki had seen too many human houses to be surprised by the close cohabitation. It looked like a nice place, cozy and bearing all the marks of being long occupied; but surprisingly, the woman and the girl who was presumably her daughter looked to be the only people who lived there.

   There was a fire lit in the ground hearth, which was just as sturdy as the house itself; Loki could see that it was lined with stone. There was also a pot hanging over the separate _máeldur _ ; and whatever was inside was giving off an enticing smell. Loki’s stomach growled.

    The table was already set up, but only set for two. The girl darted off and returned clutching a third shallow bowl, which she slid across the table towards Loki.

    “My name is Alfdís, by the way,” the woman said. “There’s some water over there; go ahead and use it.” She gestured to a small basin tucked between two tall boards like it was pretending to be a cabinet.

    “My thanks.” Loki took advantage of the offer (and the relatively clean water) to wash off what sweat and dirt he could without taking his clothes off.

    “You look tired,” Alfdís said idly, taking one of the plates to start serving out their meal. “Have you been walking long?”

    “Longer than I’d like.”

    “I see. This is Siv, by the way,” Alfdís said, gesturing at the girl. Loki gave her a sharp glance without thinking - luckily, neither of the women were looking at him.

    He knew people named their children after gods, of course, but he hadn’t expected to run into any such children. And the girl looked nothing like Sif, anyway, he didn’t know why it had made him react like that.

    ...When in doubt, blame his sudden mood swings.

    The food was good. Loki ate carefully; the weird morning sickness had made him wary of simply bolting down food. Siv watched him the entire time, barely even looking down at her own meal to make sure she wasn’t about to spill it down her front. Alfdís appeared to notice, and seemed to decide that asking questions was the way to distract him from her daughter’s unsubtle curiosity.

    “Siv says you came from the north,” she said, glancing at Loki. “The forest route is not the way I’d have imagined you’d came.”

    “I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” Loki admitted. He could spare that much truth; politeness was expected, and contrary to what some gods might have believed, he was capable of it. “Most everyone brings up the same thing when they see me walking alone, and I was tired of having the same conversation over again when I was already tired of walking.”

    “I...see,” Alfdís said, and the corner of her mouth twitched like she was trying not to smile. “I can guess what I shouldn’t ask, then.”

    “I appreciate it.”

    Most of the talk after that was between mother and daughter, which Loki also appreciated, because then he didn’t have to watch his words. Keeping up a human disguise could be quite exhausting. He reflected that he might have to think up a backstory, out of purely self-defense.

    After the meal, however, when he rose to help put the table and everything else away, Alfdís stopped him and pushed him instead towards another seat.

    “We’ll manage on our own,” she said. “We have before.”

    “I would feel pointless just sitting around,” Loki protested.

    “Then in exchange for the meal, you can answer my questions later,” Alfdís said, deceptively kindly, and went to go help Siv put the table away before Loki could argue. Grumpily, Loki sat, but part of him was somewhat glad for the excuse to rest.

    The benches that lined the side of the hall were narrower than Loki was used to; he’d seen plenty of longhouses in Miðgarð, some so crowded and narrow that people slept sitting up, but here with only two people there looked to be plenty of room. He had spied an enclosed bed when he’d come in, which presumably belonged to Alfdís, and the little cluster of slightly nicer blankets must have been where Siv slept.

    His initial thought that it had been well-built proved true. Barely a single wisp of smoke from the fire remained caught inside, and there was ample light despite the lack of windows. It was a very comfortable place. He’d be disappointed to leave it.

    Alfdís came and sat next to him, when everything was cleared away and she’d stoked the fire up a bit. Siv had retreated to the goat’s byre at the other end, probably giving it its own _náttmál._

    “Can I ask how far along you are?” She asked.

    “You could, but I would have no answer,” Loki said dryly, leaning back against the wall. Alfdís raised her eyebrows, but did not seem very surprised.

    “That isn’t so rare as it might seem,” she said. “Could you guess, perhaps?”

    “A few months?” Loki hazarded. Alfdís nodded; he must have given the answer she expected.

    “I can guess why you’re alone,” Alfdís said, “and why you’ve come here when you’re not here to visit anyone; if you were married, I assume you would be kept safe in someone else’s house.”

    Loki snorted. “I have no desire to be kept safe. I’ve done fine on my own.”

    “You have been lucky,” Alfdís told him sternly. “Lucky that you haven’t encountered any trouble, or had to be out on your own for too long.”

    “I don’t see-”

    “What was your plan for when you grew too heavy and big to move around as you once had?” Alfdís asked. Loki swallowed the rest of his sentence and gave the ground a sour look, because it would be impolite to look at Alfdís like that after she’d offered him shelter. “There are people in this land for whom even hospitality is not enough to make them extend a hand to someone they dislike.”

    “But you are kind enough to offer?” Loki asked sarcastically. He could guess what Alfdís was getting at - trying to make him more grateful to her so she could ask for a large favor.

    “Do you see a man around here?” Alfdís questioned, looking and sounding unimpressed. Loki was tempted to reply _Give me a mirror and I’ll try._ “I have a child of my own, and I was lucky enough to have a house to live in and a friend to aid me with the hard parts of carrying her.”

    “And where’s her father?” Loki asked. “Since we seem to be exchanging questions.”

    “Dead,” Alfdís said simply. Loki froze for a moment. Apparently, he had the imagination of a fish, now, to be unable to guess why Siv’s father might be absent. Alfdís saved him from having to say anything about it by inclining her head downwards and asking, “And this one’s?”

    “...He doesn’t know.”

    “Why not?”

    “I didn’t want to marry him, for a start,” Loki scoffed, and then looked away and muttered, “I never got the chance to say, either.” Not that he would have, or _ever_ would, tell Auðunar a thing about the child or its parentage.

    He could guess what Alfdís would think; that his father had sent him away from home, or worse disowned him, and then banished the presumed lover before any contact could be made. Loki was hoping she would stick with her assumptions and not ask any more.

    Alfdís only made a faint, thoughtful noise; and then she said, “I was going to say this first, but you’re welcome to stay longer than one night.”

    “What?” Loki looked back at her sharply. “Why? You - you don’t even know my name.”

    “You could tell me what it is,” Alfdís suggested. “As for why - I could not in good conscience send you or your child off to an uncertain fate when there was something I could do to help.”

    Loki stared.

    “You’re offering to let me stay for months because it’s the right thing to do,” he said flatly.       

    “Is that so surprising?”

    ...Perhaps he should have spent more time among humans, if more of them were like this. Hospitality was one thing, but what she was offering was another. A guest could very easily overstay their welcome, but she seemed prepared to house him indefinitely. Or however long a pregnancy lasted, at least.

Humans could be so strange and varied compared to Asgard, despite the multitude of familiarities.

    “No, I suppose not,” Loki lied.

    “Then we’re agreed.” Alfdís sat back, looking satisfied. “And your name?”

    “Luta,” Loki improvised. “Just - just Luta.” He couldn’t come up with some fake father’s name on the spot _and_ decently lie about it.

    Alfdís nodded, believing him, and said, “I’ll find an extra blanket for you; there’s plenty of space for you to sleep.”

    And that was that. Loki was a little baffled, but he did not complain.

    Life at Alfdís’s was a careful balance of a guest’s politeness and a family member’s position. In exchange for a place to stay, Alfdís often asked Loki to help with various tasks. The problem with that was that Loki did not know how to do any of the things that a woman might generally be expected to do; Alfdís must have thought that he was a hopeless case, or else a very bad student as a child.  But finding himself with no other choice, Loki became somewhat accomplished at very basic weaving and cooking, enough that Alfdís did not have to do everything she usually did, plus accommodate an extra person.

    Alfdís was surprisingly patient with him about it, which only spurred Loki to try a little harder than if she’d been short-tempered and condescending. He managed at repairing clothing quite adeptly, which meant that most of it fell to him. Loki thought it was very boring work, but it took up a surprising amount of time. And socks required a more complicated pattern than he’d been aware of.

    Siv did her own share of work already, as far as Loki could tell. But even with only two people (now three), there was still much to be done. Siv’s domain lay with the family’s livestock, and occasionally weaving, when she could be bothered to practice. Loki slotted into the overlap of chores that neither of them wanted or were used to doing. He was never quite sure what to think of that.

    It was pleasanter, though, than Loki would ever admit to anyone back in Asgard. The routine could get boring and repetitive, true, but sharing it with Alfdís and Siv tended to make it somehow less so. And it was hard _not_ to share, with little to no privacy inside the house and not much to do outside of it, except graze Alfdís’s little herd of cows and the goat.

    Loki had to keep a constant watch on himself, to make sure he didn’t say anything odd or do anything that might hint at his true background. He wasn’t sure if he had managed it; once he had remarked offhand about how he was not used to somewhere so small, and Alfdís had looked at him in surprise and said that his father must have been very well-off. Loki thought he had excused it well enough, with a stilted and modest comment about a family inheritance; but sometimes Alfdís still gave him curious, searching looks.

    Summer had made itself at home in Miðgarð, which meant that Siv was often out of the house when she had time to spare, running around outside playing whatever games she could think of. Sometimes the baker’s daughter or the occasional boy around her age would drift up the hill from town and play with her, or Siv would go into town and meet them when there was nothing urgent for her to do at home.

    During those times, Alfdís and Loki usually covered whatever needed to be done themselves; and Loki was preparing to go outside and do just that when something _moved_ in his stomach.

    He froze immediately. Was something wrong? Had something happened? He didn’t _feel_ bad - nothing had happened out of the ordinary all day, not even since he’d realized his condition. Alfdís turned around when she realized he wasn’t following her, and saw that he had one arm around his stomach.

    “Oh, did the baby kick?” She asked.

    “What?” Loki said blankly. “ _Kick?_

    “I figured you’d feel something soon enough,” Alfdís said. “It’s big enough, by the looks of things, to start moving around.” She smiled wryly. “Not necessarily a good thing. When I was carrying Siv she’d spend ages kicking at my ribs. I got very sore most days.”

    “The miracle of life,” Loki joked halfheartedly, still caught a little off-kilter. He’d been getting bigger fairly steadily, although the bump was still not that big, but the idea of the child inside him moving around and _kicking_ had not occurred to him. He should probably start asking more questions about what exactly was going to happen to him. He generally liked knowing things _before_ they happened.

    Luckily, Alfdís was a very knowledgeable woman, having occasionally served as a midwife for friends in the town, and patient as well. Loki could go up to her with only the beginnings of a question, and she’d guess immediately at what the problem was; though at the moment, Loki’s biggest problem was how often he was forced to go to the bathroom.

    She was uncommonly kind to him, too. Alfdís lent him a dress that was gathered just under his breasts, to allow room for his belly, and draped farther down in front. Loki assumed it was so that, with the added baby bump, the hemline would be just about even. She also assured him that she owned several, so that he need not wear the same one for days on end.

    “I cannot possibly pay you back for all this,” Loki said, feeling a little awkward in the homespun wool. He felt off-kilter already from how his chest size seemed to have increased without any input from him. The dress wasn’t of an unfamiliar make, but it felt distinctly looser below the waist. The simple change in where it was gathered had managed to make him feel the difference from his usual clothes more keenly.

    “Don’t be silly,” Alfdís said, neatly folding a separate dress meant for the same purpose and laying it out, then casting Loki’s dirty one onto the pile of clothes that needed washing. “I’m not using it, now am I? I should think one who has clothes to spare and doesn’t lend them out when they’re needed must be very selfish indeed.”

    Loki could not figure out what to say; whether to thank her, or or to demand what her true motives were.

    Summer drew on, and it grew warmer and greener out. Siv complained sometimes of her friends not being available, but even children were needed at home to help out, including her. Loki was surprised when Siv started trying to count the days until Midsummer; he had not realized that a holiday was coming up on them so fast.

    Walpurgisnacht was one he had been looking forward to, before the whole wall incident; but it had come and gone while Loki was traveling, which he did not regret. He wasn’t in the mood to attend a feast celebrating Oðin and possibly attract his brother’s attention at the moment. But Midsummer now was just around the corner, and there was no way he was passing up _this_ one.

    He’d always liked Midsummer; it was nicer than Yule, being generally much warmer, even though there _was_ the vague looming threat that fall was soon coming, and winter on its heels. But there wasn’t much to do on Yule besides light a bonfire and talk to the same people you’d been stuck inside with all winter. With Midsummer, the opportunities were endless.

    Unless one was pregnant, but he could live with that.

    Siv would have physically pulled the both of them out the door, if she had the strength to or if she’d dared to do it to Loki with Alfdís watching. Loki couldn’t help but be amused by her enthusiasm. He’d have been that excited too, if he were twelve. As it was, Siv ran ahead of them as they made their way down the hill, towards the town and the light of distant bonfires that were already lit.

    Music was already playing when they arrived, and a space had cleared for a few dancers. A bonfire was burning in the center, in what must have been a hurriedly-dug hearth, and people were roasting meat over smaller fires at the fringes of the field. Alfdís moved through the crowd easily and deposited Loki on a small bench in a crowd of unfamiliar women who nevertheless seemed to recognize Alfdís easily. She introduced Loki as ‘Luta’, and promised to return shortly before going to find Siv.

    Loki was glad to sit down, but he wished he wasn’t with a group of strangers. He felt unusually nervous. In a borrowed dress and with his hair loose (normal for his circumstances and his disguise, but unusual for him), he felt more like a liar than usual. And the women all looked curious; he wasn’t sure how quickly he could develop a believable backstory

But surprisingly, all they asked was how far along he was and if he’d thought of a name, and when Loki said he hadn’t he sparked a long conversation about names and children which drifted onto the subject of long-gone ancestors and what strange kennings they’d earned in life. He barely had to participate. Loki supposed that he was lucky that, by whatever chance, just being pregnant meant it was all anyone ever wanted to talk about with him.

    Alfdís reappeared after not too long, with the news that there would be food set up soon. The group of women received her warmly, and by proxy warmed up a bit to Loki, too. Loki gleaned a couple names as Alfdís greeted them; Guðný was the one who had first talked to Loki; the one with black hair and a bit of an Eastern look was Mœid, accompanied by her married daughter Signy; and Vigdis was Siv’s godmother. Loki recognized the name when she asked how Siv was doing; Alfdís had mentioned her once before.

    “You’re too quiet,” Guðný told Loki, turning to him out of the blue. “What’s the point if you don’t have a husband? Don’t just sit around like you’ve been turned to stone!” She seemed to delight in trying to provoke Loki to speak, and continued to pester him to contribute to the conversation. Loki found himself equal parts entertained and annoyed by it.

    The more he spoke, however, the more he learned about the others. A passing comment about Siv’s exuberance made Guðný laugh and Signy sigh wistfully over the absentmindedness of her own daughter, Katla, who was nearing fifteen and yet still could tangle a weaving project beyond salvation. Guðný admired Loki’s hair, and he admitted that he wished he had the time to do it up a little. He was used to braiding it, when not in disguise, but that wouldn’t suit an unmarried woman. That prompted Mœid to talk for a little while about the elaborate ways her mother had done her own hair, back in the country to the East where she was originally from.

    “And where are you from?” Guðný asked Loki, with more than a little interest. “And don’t say up on the hill; I mean where did you come to this town from?”

    “Oh, the north,” Loki said vaguely. Asgard _was_ about as far ‘north’ as one could go on Yggdrasil.

    “What, like Hålogaland?”

    “Near there,” Loki improvised. “It’s very isolated; I doubt you’ll have heard of it.”

    “It can’t be as far away as Mœid’s mother’s home,” Vigdis remarked, and Mœid smiled slightly and said she doubted that anyone could come from farther.

    Two long tables were set up soon after, when the sun was still almost a handswidth above the horizon, and the food that had been cooking was brought out. Loki chose the seat that required him to move as little as possible, and ended up sandwiched between the cheerful bundle of Alfdís and Guðný, with Siv on the former’s side and all the other women laughing on latter’s. Guðný continued to chatter to him; Loki found he enjoyed the conversation. She was a humorous woman, and pretty too.

    “Your hair really is so nice,” Guðný sighed for the second time, casting an appreciative glance at him.

    “You could try bleaching yours,” Loki suggested.

    “Oh, that would only make it blonde, not red. That kind of color can’t be imitated, except maybe by magic.”

    “Perhaps if a völva came by, you could ask her for a favor.”

    Guðný laughed. After a tiny moment of hesitation, Loki did too. He hadn’t meant it as a joke. Perhaps traveling völva, or even regular witches, were not so common this far south.

    “Besides, you can braid yours,” Loki added when they’d both subsided, gesturing at Guðný’s braided crown, and the long tail of brown that hung down her back. “It keeps it out of your face _and_ looks beautiful.”

    “Oh, thank you.” Guðný ran a hand over her hair absentmindedly, smiling. Loki was used to women blushing when he complimented them, but normally it was also accompanied by a look like they were not sure what he wanted out of it, or a vaguely scandalized expression. Also, he was usually in the shape of a man and not obviously pregnant when he did so. “I’m sure yours would look lovely, too.”

    Loki was sure Guðný was about to offer to braid his, no matter how improper it might be; but Mœid distracted her with a question, and Guðný lost track of where their talk had gone.

    The food was as good as the company, and so Loki had gotten very comfortable when someone stood up and cried, “A toast to the gods! For a long summer and a good harvest later!”

    It was echoed up and down the table; but Loki did not repeat it, and only pretended to drink, and did not notice Alfdís’s curious look towards him. In between the two tables, the bonfire blazed high, sparks flying up and away from it and growing more easily visible as it got slowly darker and darker out.

    Siv started drooping a little by the time the sun went down, but it was an hour or two more before Alfdís finally left the fireside (and the company) to take Siv back home. Loki, of course, followed them.

    It was something of a relief to lie down. Loki’s back hurt, as always, from the weight he was carrying; but even sitting down relieved some of the pressure. He wished he had something hot to put under his back, but that was a little unrealistic. He closed his eyes instead and listened to the rustle of Siv shifting around and Alfdís taking the time to wash her face off before she retreated to bed herself. They’d put the fire out before leaving, but Siv had paused to throw a few logs on and stoke it a little before retreating to bed, to keep them warm.

   The longhouse smelled like smoke, and a little like the bread from that morning. Loki hadn’t realized how familiar that smell had become until he had to consciously try to pick out what it was.

    “I had fun,” Siv said drowsily, from the other side of the house. “We should do that more.”

    “Wait until the harvest,” Alfdís murmured, skirt swishing as she walked past. Loki smiled to himself, and for once didn’t have any trouble drifting off to sleep.

    Of course, he also got jerked awake in the middle of the night for no reason, because the Norns couldn’t give him a break.

    Loki stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out why he was awake. Then the baby kicked again, and things suddenly made more sense.

    Loki huffed and patted his bump. Not even born yet, and the kid was already keeping him up. Where could these troublemaking instincts ever have come from.

    Loki was feeling less kindly towards the kicking when morning came and he hadn’t managed to fall back asleep. And of course with morning came Alfdís and Siv walking around and setting up breakfast and everything else that had to be done, so there was no chance after that. Loki resigned himself to being awake and sat up.

    “Good morning,” Alfdís said in passing, and Siv grinned at him as she darted towards the other end of the house, and Loki wondered at how his presence here had come to be taken for granted.

    In the later days of summer, Alfdís often sat down with Loki while she wove. Loki had not paid much attention to her multitasking, until he got handed the first finished square of cloth and Alfdís started instructing him on how to make a shirt.

    “When will I need to know how to do this?” Loki scoffed.

    “If you want your child to have any, you’d better,” Alfdís replied, unimpressed. “Unless you think babies come out of the womb wearing a complete outfit.”

    Loki flushed, and took the needle from her. It took him several tries to thread it.

    He ended up with a lot of work along those lines, and it kept him busy. The baby would sometimes kick when he was in the middle of it, and one memorable time it had made Loki startle and nearly stab himself with a needle. Alfdís graciously pretended she hadn’t noticed, but she had snorted and then covered her mouth.

   Clothing was _complicated,_ especially at a reduced scale. There was far more cutting and sewing back together than Loki had expected. Luckily, his earlier attempts at sewing had made him a little more adept at such things, and he ended up with baby-size clothing that looked fairly good.

    “It’ll do,” Alfdís said, surveying the results. “He needs to be warm, not look nice.”

    “Thank y - wait, _he?_ ” Loki repeated, stunned.

    “You’re carrying low,” Alfdís replied, surveying his belly critically. “It’s probably a boy. Didn’t I say that?”

    “No.” Loki curled a hand around his belly. A boy. A _son._ Not bad for a first attempt.

    “Well,” Alfdís said, with a faint smile, “unless you want your son to have nothing but underthings and a shirt, there’s more to be done.”

    “There always is,” Loki huffed. “Well, then, teach me how to do that spiral stitch. I may as well learn it now, since you’ll probably have me use it eventually.”

    Alfdís smiled, and acquiesced. The fire burned lower while the two of them spent the evening with their heads pressed together over cloth and stitches and the slow process of creation.

    By the end of summer the days had grown shorter, and Loki’s list of chores and contributions to the house had dwindled as much as his stomach had grown. It was good timing, but only for him. The harvest season approaching meant lots of things to prepare; things like figuring out how much of their livestock they could afford to keep through the winter, preparing stores, or sending Siv out with Kætil’s son from the village to go gather firewood to last them through the first few months, at least.

    Loki was excused from most of these chores, given his condition, but he didn’t particularly enjoy it. He was used to helping, for one, and being sent to the sidelines made him feel useless; that, and his back constantly hurt now from the weight of his belly. He hadn’t imagined that a child who wasn’t even born yet could be so _heavy._

   And he did not like what was coming. Winter was long, and difficult, and generally much worse for humans than it was for the gods. Loki was not looking forward to it, especially seeing as the _last_ winter had gone so badly. Hopefully this time there wouldn’t be any more giants offering deals. Then again, the lack of giants was replaced by the specter of whatever might normally happen on Miðgarð that he wouldn’t be expected. Loki hated being caught unprepared and undefended, and at the moment he was both of those in the worst possible way.

    There was a harvest festival that consisted of mostly drinking (presumably everyone needed to be drunk to deal with the coming winter) and putting away all the crops they’d harvested. It was meant to a sort of last hurrah before the cold and snow, but Loki couldn’t enjoy it much, given that he was prone to getting more easily exhausted and couldn’t even drink without getting nauseous, which was really just unfair. Summer had been entirely too short, in his opinion.

    Alfdís was probably more patient with him than he deserved. Loki had never liked being limited by anything, much less his own body, but there were some things he had to accept he was physically no longer capable of. Like bending over. Or carrying heavy things. He _could_ if he wanted to, possibly, but Alfdís had pointed out that if he fell, it was no longer something to simply be brushed off. And that would only take a single misstep.

    It made him feel very odd, and limited, in a way that Loki did not like in the least.

   Over the little basin of clean water that Alfdís kept for quick washing-up, there was a somewhat scratched and cloudy mirror. Loki couldn’t lean very close to it, but it was large enough that he could see himself fairly well.

    He had not felt the same in a while; the reason was probably obvious, but Loki had been seized with the sudden urge to check and see how much of him was still the same. He still _looked_ mostly the same. The same hair and face, give or take a few times that had been an exception, were those he was used to seeing. But it was subtly...off.

   His beard was gone, and had been ever since the end of the last winter. His hair was so loosely tied back that it might as well have been left undone. His face was much the same as it always was, but the details were different; and Loki knew from experience that the details were sometimes the most important part of any lie or disguise.

    Details such as scars, for example.

    He didn’t have to keep them. He’d never had to. But Loki had been making a passive-aggressive point to the rest of the gods as obviously as he could, so he’d kept them even if he was fully capable of shapeshifting them away. He’d vanished them so as to not give himself away to Auðunar, and now his mouth looked strange without the paler, crisscrossing marks.

    Loki rubbed his hand over his mouth pensively, and let the scars draw themselves back into place. It was an improvement, at least. The mirror didn’t show anything below his neck, which meant that his reflection was a damn sight more familiar than it might have been.

    Loki wasn’t _regretting_ deciding to go through with this, but he wished the baby would hurry up and come out so he could go back to normal.

    The faint sound of the door opening made Loki turn sharply to look. He immediately realized why that was a bad idea and quickly put his back to the door, but Alfdís had stopped dead in her tracks. Had she noticed?

    “Luta?” Alfdís asked uncertainly.

    “Sorry,” Loki said, exaggerating his own nervousness so that it was easily audible. “I just...got a bit anxious. It’s nothing.” He rubbed his hand over his face again, erasing the scars back into unmarked skin.

    “...If you say so.” Alfdís walked past, pausing to him a searching glance; Loki returned it, and then looked away ‘shyly’, putting one hand on his stomach to complete the impression he was trying to give. “You would say if you thought something had gone wrong?”

    “Of course,” Loki said, a little startled. _Could_ things go wrong when he was this far along? It probably happened to humans, of course, but he’d never heard of anything like that happening in Asgard.

    Alfdís nodded, but her gaze lingered on him uncertainly before she moved on.

    Loki hoped that his long presence here, coupled with a lack of _anything_ strange happening, would prevent any kind of suspicion from arising.

 


	2. Birth, and the Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, part two! I didn't know there was going to be a part two, but it turns out this is too long for one chapter. Who'd'a thunk.
> 
> This chapter, as you may have guessed, is where Slepnir is actually born! I promise I went into as little detail as possible while still preserving the narrative. But yay, baby!
> 
> As with the last chapter, there will be an explanatory author's note. Feel free to leave questions in the comments, too!

    The first snow fell, with excellent timing, on the first night of Vetrnætr; the first true night of winter. It was barely a dusting, compared with the amount Loki knew Miðgarð was capable of being buried under, but it was enough for him to make his excuses. The hill was not steep; but he waved off Alfdís’s worry and Siv’s disappointment and begged off going to celebrate in the village for fear of slipping. And Vetrnætr was, after all, much more fun if you could drink and run around and mostly an exercise in jealousy if you couldn’t. 

Loki had better reasons than those for staying inside, however. The first night of Vetrnætr was the beginning of the Wild Hunt; a chaotic string of nights spent hunting and occasionally scaring humans that Loki had participated in, when he felt like it or when Oðin asked him to. The Hunt was long, and lasted well into the dregs of winter, brushing the beginning of summer. The only reason Oðin hadn’t set out on it so often the previous winter was because of the giant and the wall, but Loki was sure he would this year. Winter was the season of hunting, after all, when nothing would grow, and gods had to eat just as much as everyone else. 

Wryly, Loki imagined what Oðin might say if Loki showed up to participate in the Hunt as he was. He’d never dare, but it was funny to imagine his brother’s face, and there weren’t exactly consequences for just thinking about it.

Loki kept the fire stoked and listened hard as night fell, so that he almost felt like he was straining his ears like a watchdog to hear better; but he didn’t hear anything that sounded like he remembered. Perhaps (hopefully) the Wild Hunt wouldn’t pass this way until long after he’d gone. And when Alfdís and Siv returned, slightly damp and snowy and tired, he found that some of his nervousness melted away. 

“We brought you a candle,” Siv said, offering it eagerly. Alfdís’s fond but tolerant look suggested that the candle had been Siv’s idea alone. “So you can light it for your ancestors.”

That  _ was  _ this holiday. Shit. Loki had been hoping to avoid that part. He smiled patiently, and took the candle. “I’m afraid my family is all still alive.”

“ _ Ancestors _ , not family,” Siv said, like she thought he was being dense on purpose. “Like your grandparents, or  _ their  _ parents.”

Loki didn’t really have any of those, unless Ymir counted, but technically Ymir counted for everyone. 

“Well, maybe you can light it from the fire for me,” Loki said, offering it back. “I can’t bend over that far anymore.”

Siv grinned, and did so eagerly; Alfdís took it from her, then, and placed it on the low cabinet whose top served as a small altar. She had, Loki noticed, set out some mead as well, before they left, and decorated with pine branches.

“There,” Alfdís said. The new candle stood somewhat separate from the rest of the altar, perched on the corner.

“Won’t the gods mind?” Siv asked.

“I’m sure they’ll understand a little familial respect,” Loki reassured her, privately very glad that he had not been the one to light the candle. He didn’t want any attention from that quarter if he could avoid it. He would hate to have to cut his time with the two of them short, especially now.

“Oh, alright,” Siv said reluctantly. “Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight, Siv.”

Siv’s enthusiasm from Vetrnætr persisted throughout the first weeks of winter. She loved the snow, and would often go out to play in it; but that mood lasted for all of a month, at which point she got sick of the damp and cold and stayed inside to play other games. Loki thought Alfdís seemed rather relieved by this; neither of them had wanted Siv to catch some winter illness so early in the season.

But Siv was an adventurous girl. Loki woke once, in the middle of the night, and couldn’t fathom why until he heard the soft shuffle of feet on the floor and noticed the flicker of candlelight.

Loki sat up, which was a labor all its own, and saw Siv frozen in place in the act of creeping towards the door, eyes fixed on him.

“What are you doing?” Loki whispered harshly.

“I heard-” Siv began. But it became quickly apparent what she had heard; in the distance a dog barked, baying like it was on the scent of some animal, and another fainter bark echoed the first.

Loki was glad of the dim light, suddenly, for he was sure he’d gone very pale.

“Go back to bed,” he said, and when Siv hesitated, hissed “Go to  _ bed!  _ Why on Earth would you go outside when the Wild Hunt is passing?”

“The Wild Hunt?” Siv glanced towards the door, then hurried back to her spot. The candle in her hand flickered wildly at the sudden movement.

“What is it?” Alfdís asked groggily, turning over to face away from the wall. She blinked a few times and then frowned when she saw the candle. “Siv?”

The dogs bayed again, accompanied by a wind sweeping past the house with a low groan. Alfdís sat up quickly. Loki had wondered what it would take to rattle a woman with such a deep well of calm patience, and he appeared to have found his answer. 

“Is it really the Hunt?” Siv whispered. She was looking at Loki. A drip of wax slid down the side of the candle, and Siv put it down with a hiss. 

“I’m sure of it,” Loki said. He was looking towards the direction the sound had come from. He didn’t realize he had one arm protectively curled around his belly until Siv asked,

“Are you scared?”

Loki looked at her sharply, startled, then down at himself, realizing.

“Everyone with sense is wary of the Hunt,” he said, forcing himself to put his arms at his side. “Gods don’t always care about the wellbeing of humans they might come across.” And who knows what they’d say if the found him here, like this. 

Siv’s eyes had gone wide, like she’d never considered the danger. Or maybe at the implication that she might have met a god if she’d gone outside. 

“But the gods don’t hurt humans,” she said. “ _ Thor _ wouldn’t.”

“This is not Thor’s hunt,” Alfdís said quietly. Loki caught the glance she cast at the altar, with its candles extinguished, Loki’s still standing on the edge. “Go back to bed, Siv. It will pass by morning.”

Reluctantly, Siv wet her fingers and snuffed out the candle.

In the morning, the snow on the hill was clean and unmarked, but deep in the forest Kætil from the village found a wide, beaten-down and slushy path of hoofprints.

During Siv’s morning chores, Alfdís went over to her and spoke quietly, her whole posture suggesting a tense seriousness. Loki could not overhear the conversation, and did not attempt to.

Alfdís remained wound tight until the afternoon; at which point Loki put a hand over hers, stopping her from moving the shuttle across her half-finished weaving, and said, “She  _ didn’t _ go outside. All she did was listen.”

“But she’s just the kind of foolish girl who  _ would  _ have gone out and gotten caught in the middle.” Alfdís put the shuttle down with undue force.

“Has this ever happened before?” Loki asked.

“Siv sneaking out, or the Hunt?”

“Both.”

“Yes and no,” Alfdís sighed. “Siv’s gone out on her own before, but never in the middle of winter, and never because of something like this.” Alfdís’s fingers tightened momentarily around the shuttle. “Her father was nearly caught by the Hunt, once.”

“He was?” Loki said, surprised.

“He came home pale and shaking.” Alfdís shook her head. “I didn’t know what to think, but he was truly frightened, and  _ something  _ happened, and he said it was the Hunt. If that happened to Siv-”

“But it didn’t,” Loki said, “and now she knows better.” 

“Yes,” Alfdís said, grudgingly, but with a faint smile. “Now she does.”

Winter piled on snow thickly and without remorse. Alfdís reminded Siv constantly to be careful when feeding their animals, to not be so generous with the grain, because they only had so much and it needed to last for half the year for all of them. They had one less cow than they’d had before - Alfdís had decided the meat was worth more than what it would take in grain to keep that many cows fed.

Loki was helpful where he could be, and played secret tricks of his own that generally resulted in a little more food stored up in the rafters than there had been before. Alfdís and Siv did not notice this, which he had counted on. He’d been trying to be subtle; multiplying grain was not a normal human talent, after all.

The snow, at least, meant they did not lack for water; all they had to do to take a bath was melt and warm up enough buckets of snow over the fire. Reusing water was a painful necessity in summer, but in winter there was plenty of it and no thirsty crops that needed it more than the people cultivating them. Loki often cheated with that, too, and kept the water warm for far longer than it would be otherwise.

“Other people would like to get clean too, you know,” Alfdís said pointedly while Loki was luxuriating. Outside a winter storm was howling, but inside it was cozy, and the warm water (plus an opportunity to sit down) was practically paradise. Alfdís and Siv were perched together by the fire; Alfdís adding some bit of embroidery to one of Siv’s dresses, and Siv playing with a cloth doll. A long length of cloth hung over a line usually reserved for drying laundry served as a screen between them and Loki.

“Don’t worry,” Loki replied languidly. “The water won’t vanish if I take a little longer.” 

“It might get a little colder,” Alfdís said pointedly.

“You can always warm up a bucketful and dump it back in.” Loki wished he could stretch out a bit further. His legs were pressed awkwardly against the curve of his belly. 

A particularly loud howl of wind pressed close along the house, nearly making the rafters shake. Loki imagined fresh snow piling up around them, and tried to sink a little lower into the water.

“But that would take so much time,” Siv said, whining a little. Loki supposed he  _ had  _ been soaking for a while. He should really have tried to wash a little more, but it was difficult at the moment to reach so many places on his own body he hadn’t bothered much.

“Al _ right, _ ” he sighed, gripping the sides of the tub. Getting up would be an endeavor. “I suppose I should get out before this baby learns how to swim instead of how to walk.”

Getting up  _ was  _ a hassle, not to mention getting dressed, even with Alfdís’s help (she kept her eyes politely averted from everything but Loki’s face). Siv vanished around the cloth screen as soon as Loki sat down. 

“Are all children this enthusiastic?” Loki asked.

“Not when she was younger, she wasn’t,” Alfdís replied. “Baths meant lots of screaming and tantrums.”

“ _ Moðir! _ ” Siv yelled. Loki snorted, pressing a hand over his mouth.

“I’m only being honest with her, Siv!”

“That’s not common, is it?” Loki asked. A splash came from the other side of the screen.

“Oh, it depends.” Alfdís seemed to take pity on him. “I’m sure it’ll go fine with your boy. We’ll see soon enough.”

‘Soon’ had been cropping up more and more in their conversations. Occasionally, Loki tried to add up the months in his head. The very tail end of winter to the beginning of the next was one season, and from what he knew from talking with Alfdís, pregnancies generally did not last much longer than that. But he hadn’t kept track of the full moons, which were unreliable anyway, and was not sure how much longer he had to go. Alfdís assured him that it was probably soon. And winter was a good time to be reaching the end of his pregnancy; it was easier to lie around inside, in relative comfort, when there was not much else that needed doing. This time of year, there was just snow and the fire inside, and whatever stories or entertainment one could conjure up.

    Siv made up her own games to play, racing around and climbing up into the rafters, or recruiting her mother for a simple wooden board game. Loki played once or twice, sitting on the floor with the board on the bench in order to not have to bend over; but due to his tendency to win, Siv disliked playing against him. Alfdís was easier to beat, but would only play when she was very, very bored.

One evening, to Loki’s surprise, Alfdís opened a worn-looking chest that had been stored underneath the benches, so that he had never taken any special notice of it. Revealed inside were many carefully-packed wooden figures, carved by someone with no small amount of talent. Each one was narrow, with the head being the most detailed part and the shapes of clothing suggested by shallow lines. When Loki got a good look at them, he had to struggle to keep himself from laughing, for they were clearly meant to be gods.

    Loki was endlessly entertained by humans’ multitude of ideas about what the gods looked like; with him especially they always seemed to include elaborate mustaches. It was equal parts hilarious and a little flattering, that they thought he could pull those off. He chose to ignore the possibility that it was meant to look ridiculous.

Siv bounced around eagerly, only sitting down when she was allowed to help unpack them. Loki watched in amusement as they produced a Thor who was half as wide as he was tall, much stouter than any of the others and probably meant to look big and intimidating. After him came a short Freyr, a mysterious-looking Oðin in a tall hat and a cloak, and a Loki with a narrow face and a tracery of thin lines carved over his grinning mouth.

Loki thought it was a pretty accurate representation. 

Emptying the chest resulted in a fair little crowd of wooden gods and goddesses. Alfdís had evidently used them to tell stories before; she expertly organized the unnecessary ones into a little group of bystanders, and placed several Loki did not recognize (save for Oðin) to the side, separately.

Loki didn’t realize what story she meant to tell, until Alfdís used two skinny sticks to mark off an aisle and put a lump of unfinished wood in the center, and said in a dramatic voice,

“In the beginning, there was only Ginnungagap.”

Siv sat and watched, just as fascinated as Loki, as Alfdís used the little figures to act out the story; the birth of Buri, and Borr, and then Oðin and his true brothers, who slew Ymir. Loki could tell it had been told many times before; Siv would move figures preemptively, or chorus along with some of the important lines, drawing a grin from her mother.

“Do another one,” Siv begged, when Alfdís finished with a similarly dramatic line. “Do the one about Heimdall and the runes.”

“Oh, you can’t go straight to Heimdall,” Loki protested, smiling when Siv looked up at him curiously. “You’ve forgotten the most important part of the story already.” Perhaps it was unwise, but it wasn’t like either of them would begin to suspect his identity just from a story.

“What part?” Siv asked. “That’s how moðir always tells it.”

“True,” Loki said, “but there was something that happened before Oðin became king, that most people forget.”

“He was always king,” Alfdís said, with raised eyebrows. “Unless you know a story I don’t.”

“I do,” Loki said, and shifted around before sighing and deciding that getting up was not happening that day. “Here is what happened; Oðin was not king right away. He would be, but other things happened first.”

“Like what?” Siv asked, already entranced.

“Most importantly,” Loki said, “he met Loki.”

Alfdís looked surprised; Siv looked thrilled, and hurriedly discarded all the figures except for Oðin and then put Loki down right next to him.

“Well?” She asked; demanded, more like. 

“ _ Well, _ ” Loki echoed, settling himself more comfortably, “it’s true that Oðin killed Ymir with the help of his brothers, Vili and Vé; and it’s also true that they built most of the Nine Realms together and kept Asgard for themselves, because it was a golden realm and they liked it best of all the ones in existence.

“But he had not met Loki yet, and so Oðin got very bored sometimes.” Loki gestured, and Siv helpfully removed the Loki figure to the side, and put Vili and Vé next to Oðin. “He had killed Ymir, but he did not like staying in Asgard with only his brothers. He gained a wife, Frigg, and he tried to populate Asgard with other gods, and that worked for a time. But he soon grew tired of them again, even though he liked them all well enough, and he longed to find another taste of the same wildness he had known before the death of Ymir, and before Asgard existed.

“So Oðin went to his family, and said he was going off to the other realms, and that he was going to travel up and down Yggdrasil until he had learned all there was to know. Frigg said that she would miss him dearly, and his brothers protested, but Oðin was firm, and eventually they gave it up and bid him farewell.

“Before he left, Frigg asked, ‘Who will lead us in your stead?’ Because while he wasn’t king, he was in charge by virtue of being the eldest and most powerful, and someone was needed to replace him. Oðin knew his brothers well, and thought they were more suited to battle, and so did not choose either of them; instead, he went to the other gods. There was a man called Hymir, who had a son named Tyr, and Oðin told Tyr, ‘You shall rule for me, while I am gone, and make sure all of Asgard is protected’. And Tyr agreed. Oðin told him-”

“Wait,” cried Siv, and Loki paused in surprise. Siv had to dig through the crowd until she managed to produce a figure who was missing a hand, presumably knocked off by someone who was not as careful as they should have been. Loki assumed it to be Tyr. He must not have been used often; Siv had had a far easier time locating Frigg.

“Alright,” said Siv, looking up at him once she’d put Tyr next to Oðin. “Keep going.” She sounded quite imperious.

“Oðin told him,” Loki continued dryly, “‘Take care not to sit on the high seat Hlidskjalf while I am gone, for the man who does will see many things, and a lesser man will not know what to do about it. Make your own chair, and keep mine safe until my return. And Tyr agreed. Finally, Oðin told him, ‘Make sure that my family is safe; for I trust my brothers, but my wife Frigg is beautiful, and I do not want her to go back to her father’s house if something might happen here.’ And Tyr agreed, and with everything arranged Oðin set out alone. He wore a cape and a broad hat, and carried a staff, and called himself by no name at all if he could help it.

“Oðin disguised himself as a wanderer quite a lot; this was only the first time. Then, it was easier because no one knew him very well yet, and he could go wherever he liked without anyone recognizing him. Of course, once he  _ had  _ been somewhere he tended to make an impression, and so it happened that when he had been to almost every realm, he realized that the the only place left where he could travel peacefully was Jötunheim.”

“But the giants,” Siv objected, and looked about to say more, but Loki held up a hand to quiet her.

“As I was  _ going  _ to say,” Loki said, “Oðin was not eager to go to Jötunheim, because he knew the giants that lived there disliked him for the slaughter of Ymir, and if any of them discovered his true identity they would likely turn to violence. But Oðin also knew that there was knowledge in Jötunheim, such as magic he knew little of, and knowledge was the one thing he was easily tempted by. So he went to Jötunheim despite the danger, still disguised as a traveler without a name.

“It happened that Jötunheim was a very wild place; but Oðin was used to having to camp and hunt for himself, and did not think he could depend upon the hospitality of others which was granted in realms like Asgard or Vanaheim. Or Miðgarð,” Loki added, making Siv perk up at the mention of her home. “So he prepared his resting place, as usual, and picked up his bow and the arrows he had with him, preparing to hunt something so he could eat. And it happened that he saw a fox, a very bright red one, and thought that it should be very easy to hunt, given that it was so visible. And so he set off to follow it. 

“The fox wound through Jötunheim’s forests in such a strange pattern that Oðin nearly lost track of it a few times. Often he wondered at its intelligence, for it seemed to be trying to confuse him and escape. But eventually he cornered it against an outcropping of rock, near the base of some mountains, and took aim, when the fox said, ‘Wait!’”

“The  _ fox  _ said?” Siv questioned, looking blown away. Loki smiled at her astonishment.

“The fox took advantage of Oðin’s surprise, and asked, ‘Why are you hunting me down?’” Loki continued. “Oðin replied that he had thought the fox to be simply a fox, and not intelligent and capable of thought, and apologized.

“‘You’re still being foolish,’ the fox said. ‘You think I’m just a fox! Don’t you know that the people here can change shape at will, and in fact do so for fun whenever they like?’

“Oðin was startled, but tried not to show it, for he hoped not to reveal his godly nature. ‘Then you are a giant,’ he said. ‘What do you really look like?’

“‘I don’t see why I should answer any question of yours,’ the fox said. ‘You may have put your bow down, but you still tried to shoot me.’

“So Oðin put his bow away, and his arrows back into his quiver. ‘My name is Arnhöfði,’ he said, ‘and if you would at least give yours in return, we may put this incident behind us.’

“‘That isn’t your name,’ the fox said. ‘Eagle-Head is a heavy name for a babe to bear; I don’t believe that your mother would have given you such a name. It’s clear you don’t trust me.’ 

“‘It is true,” Oðin allowed, ‘that is only one of my names. In truth I am Auðun.’

“‘Friend of wealth, I see!’ The fox cried. ‘Do you think this will make me friendlier?’ But in truth the fox was very pleased at the riddling talk, for he liked riddles greatly and did not meet many people who cared to trade them. ‘Fine! I am Red-Haired, if you will accept that for a name.’

“‘You might at least give me a proper name, and not a kenning,’ Oðin said.

“‘As if those names of yours are not kennings!’ The fox scoffed. ‘Give me  _ your  _ name first.’

“‘If I did, I would ask for yours first,’ Oðin said, ‘and for you to swear that you would not harm me while I am in Jötunheim.’

“‘A lot to ask from a stranger,’ the fox said, but he agreed, for he was now deathly curious about this odd hunter who had such strange names. He swore to the oath, and then reared up on his hind legs and stretched up, changing into the shape of a man, with a long braid as red as the fox’s coat had been, and a thickly furred cloak that was clearly made with Jötunheim’s harsh winters in mind.

“‘My name is Loki,’ the man said-” Loki had to pause to let Siv gasp, and then hastily put the wooden Loki figure in the right place. “-‘and I would have your name, since I’ve done as you asked.’ And Oðin smiled, and told him.”

Loki gave Siv a mischievous smile. “Now, Loki became angry, because he realized that he had been tricked, and he liked Oðin Giant-Slayer no more than the rest of his kind, for Oðin had very nearly been the end of the Jötnar. But he was also a little bit impressed, and twice as curious as he had been before, so he said to Oðin, ‘Why are you in Jötunheim, and not at home? For no one here likes you, and you took the best realm of them all to be your home - why leave it?’

“‘I cannot learn everything by sitting in my hall,’ Oðin replied. “‘I know the dangers, which is why I asked you to swear to not harm me. I think I am as safe in your presence as I may be anywhere in Jötunheim.’

“‘Oh?’ Loki asked, wondering what taste of knowledge could have lured Oðin out of the safety of Asgard. ‘And what did you come to Jötunheim to learn?’

“‘Whatever I may,’ Oðin said, ‘for I do not know what I may find here; that is why I came.’

“Now Loki was intrigued by this strange man, and astonished that he would risk entering a realm that posed such danger to him for what seemed to Loki like a very bad reason. And so, very like Oðin himself, he wished to learn more about Oðin, so he said, ‘Look here, why don’t we travel together? I’ve sworn not to harm you, but no one else here has, and as soon as I met you I knew you were no giant - you need my help.’ To which Oðin replied,

“‘I would gladly travel with you if I knew you better; as it is, I do not think I trust you. But it’s true you’ve sworn not to harm me, so I think I will accept, though I do not know how long I will stay.’ 

“‘That’s alright,’ said Loki, ‘for I’ve nothing better to do, and so it doesn’t matter how long you’re here.’ And so Loki went back to Oðin’s camp with him; but it was many, many days before they even spoke to each other properly, outside of riddles and teasing, and even longer after that before they trusted each other or counted the other as a friend.” 

It took a moment before Siv realized he was done talking.

“That’s all?” She said, disappointed. “But what did Oðin learn? And wasn’t Loki supposed to go back to Asgard with him?”

“Those are all different stories,” Loki pointed out. “I promised only to tell how they met. And besides, nobody knows why Loki went back to Asgard with Oðin.”

“Wasn’t it because they became brothers?” Alfdís asked. She had looked as enraptured as Siv, the further Loki had gotten through the story. 

“Maybe,” Loki said, and shrugged. “But who knows why they decided to become brothers?”

“Maybe Oðin saved him from a giant,” Siv said. She was making the Oðin and Loki figures walk away together, clumsily bouncing them over the floor. “And Loki was really grateful, so he decided to go to Asgard with him.”

Loki couldn’t help the face he made at  _ that  _ suggestion. Alfdís gave him a sharp look, and Loki quickly smoothed his expression out. Luckily, Siv had not been looking at him. He was lucky he hadn’t slipped up and said ‘I’ instead of ‘Loki’. 

“Perhaps,” he allowed. “Perhaps something else. Whatever happened, it doesn’t seem like they’ve told anybody.” 

“Can’t you tell  _ one  _ more?” Siv asked pleadingly. Loki sighed like he was under a great strain and shifted his weight a little bit. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. 

“ _ Please? _ ” 

“What do you think?” Loki asked Alfdís. “Have we got time?”

“I think we’ve got nothing but time,” Alfdís replied, smiling. “You can spare one more story.”

“Tell the next bit,” Siv said immediately.

“Next bit of what? Of Loki and Oðin? There is no next bit,” Loki said. “No one knows what they did.”

“But you knew  _ that  _ story,” Siv said. “Isn’t there anything else you know that no one else does?”

Loki hummed and leaned back, pretending to think it over. He had one he _could_ tell; it was certainly an interesting story, and the details were fresh in his mind. 

   “I don’t know, I think I might be too tired tonight...” he said slowly.

“ _ Pleeeeease? _ ” Siv begged.

“Oh, alright,” Loki said, laughing. “You’ll need a bigger cast and possibly more hands for this one. This takes place in Asgard at the beginning of winter, long, long after Loki and Oðin met.”

“Wait, who do I need?” Siv’s hand hovered expectantly over the wooden figures.

“Oh, Oðin and Loki, maybe Thor and Freya. A few other gods, just to make it a crowd.” Loki waited until Siv was done setting them up in a small half-circle, amused to see she’d taken the liberty of adding in Frigg. “This story begins with a giant, as all good stories do.”

   “It was only the beginning of winter, when the giant came to Asgard; and he very boldly walked straight up to the hall of the Æsir. He was not easily recognized as a giant, because he did not look like the gods expected a giant to, so that when he entered, he was only recognized by two people; Oðin, who of course was very wise, and Loki, who had spent many years in Jötunheim and could recognize his own kind.

“This giant said, ‘I’ve come to offer you a deal. I will build you a protective wall, tall and thick to keep anything and everything out of your realm.’

“The gods were very surprised, because it was a strange offer from a stranger man, and because they had never met him before and did not know why he would offer something like that. But they didn’t really think, or try to ask any clever questions. Instead, Thor demanded,

“‘What kind of price would you take from us for this?’

“The giant laughed, and said, ‘Only what this wall is worth! I wouldn’t overcharge such a distinguished group. I ask only for the sun, the moon, and Freya’s hand in marriage.’

“The gods grew upset at this clearly unreasonable request. They liked the sun and moon very much, for they gave light to all Nine realms, and they liked Freya even better, for she was very beautiful. Thor stood up with Mjolnir and was about to strike the giant with it, when Oðin said that they would think about it, and have an answer for him the next day. And the giant agreed, and went away.

“The gods demanded an answer from Oðin, asking what he meant by not refusing him. Freya especially was very angry at being treated like something to be bartered. And Oðin said, ‘I have no intention of giving him any of those things, nor of letting him take Freya away. But a wall would serve us well, for Jötunheim envies us and Vanaheim would war with us, given a reason, and the other realms are not much better.’ And the gods saw sense in this, and reluctantly agreed.”

Loki told them how it had gone from there, Siv acting it out and Alfdís occasionally intervening to put one of the figures in the right place. He told them of the debates that had followed, and the idea that had been proposed, and the half-joke of only allowing the giant’s horse to help him. Siv reused the block of wood that had previously been Ymir for first the giant, and then Svaðilfari, as Loki related in a conspiratorial tone the horse’s strange capabilities and how Loki had been tossed out to solve the problem on his own.

“Now, no one’s quite sure  _ what  _ Loki did,” Loki said, because he was definitely not going to relate that part of the story to either of them, especially not a twelve-year-old. “But while the giant and Svaðilfari were out gathering stone to use, Svaðilfari was lured away by a mare, who raced off with him following in quick pursuit. And though the giant looked long and hard, he couldn’t find his horse, and was forced to return and try to complete his work without Svaðilfari’s help, with only three days left until his deadline.”

Loki paused, long enough for Siv to frown in confusion, and then sighed. “Unfortunately...” he waited long enough for the two of them to start looking a little worried. “I never heard the end of the story.”

“What?” Siv wailed, at the same time that Alfdís said, 

    “Oh, that’s all! I thought you were going to say that he still finished it.”

“The sun and moon are still in their proper places, so I will assume he lost,” Loki said dryly. “Else things would be much worse for all of us.”

“But what happened to the giant?” Siv asked pleadingly. Loki spread his hands apologetically.

“I don’t know. I never found out.”

“Aw.” Siv slumped into a disappointed little heap. “You really don’t know?”

“Luta was very nice to tell you those stories, Siv,” Alfdís said, chastising her gently. Siv mumbled a ‘thank you’.

“It’s alright, I’m disappointed too,” Loki admitted. “I’d quite like to find out what he’s up to now.” Or if he’d ever found Svaðilfari, or if the mare got back to Asgard alright (he’d always been fond of horses), or what Auðunar thought of the strange woman who’d persuaded him to let the mare out - or indeed if he’d ever discovered that he’d been deceived. 

“I think that’s enough stories for tonight,” Alfdís said lightly, and the wooden figures were carefully packed back into the chest and pushed back under the benches.

Winter did not get any better, or more entertaining, from there on. The Hunt did not reappear again, at least as not as far as any of the three of them heard, which was one saving grace. The wooden figures appeared only a little more frequently; they seemed to be a kind of treat that were taken out rarely, and when they were Loki did not often contribute stories, to Siv’s disappointment. If he did, he chose more popular ones to tell. He thought it was unlikely he’d be unmasked, as it were, but there was no point in being less careful than he should.

“Where did you get those figures?” Loki asked one night, after they’d been packed away and Siv was at the other end of the house. “They’re well-made.”

“Gamli made them,” Alfdís said absentmindedly, and then paused in the middle of washing off her face and seemed to remember herself. “Siv’s father,” she added, a little quieter.

“Oh,” Loki said, and then offered, “He must have had a lot of time on his hands.”

Alfdís laughed softly. “He made them in winter. We both had plenty. It was before Siv was born, about a year before - he said he thought we would probably have one soon, and he wanted to make something for her to play with.”

“He sounds like a good man,” Loki said, because somewhere along the line, he had started to consider Alfdís his friend, and he didn’t want her to be sad.

“He was,” Alfdís said, and to Loki’s surprise she was smiling faintly. “I miss him, but - I have Siv. I have a good life. It might be better with him here, but I’ve made my peace with it.” And that was the end of the conversation.

_ How odd, _ Loki thought; but Miðgarðians died so quickly, it was no wonder that they were quick to adapt.

As closely as she had brushed with death, Alfdís knew quite a lot about the matters of life. She had a trunk full of herbs which she grew in the spring and summer and stored for winter use, in case of sickness or infection. She had raised Siv on her own for years, after all, and Loki doubted Siv had avoided ever getting ill. And so it was that as the baby’s birth got closer, Alfdís sat Loki down for a very serious talk about what to expect. They were the same kind of talks the two of them had had earlier, over looms and sewing needles and cloth; but during these, Loki kept pausing or forgetting his work to clarify a point or repeat one in faint horror.

Loki had thought he’d be fairly well off, but it turned out that he did  _ not  _ know some things about pregnancy. Or much about it at all. He was really beginning to wonder why human women consented to go through this so often.

Mostly, Alfdís told him what signs to watch out for, and that the baby was probably coming relatively soon. ‘Soon’, in Loki’s opinion, couldn’t come quickly enough.

But ‘soon’ got closer and closer until Loki was on a knife’s edge waiting for something to happen, and then it appeared to...pass.

“Babies can be late sometimes,” Alfdís reassured him. “It may make labor a little more difficult, depending on  _ how  _ late, but it happens. You’re just a little unlucky, I suppose.”

“ _ Unlucky, _ ” Loki scoffed, still tense as a string in Bragi’s harp. 

“Don’t be rude when I’m trying to help you.”

“ _ Fine, _ ” Loki said, and went and lay down in an effort to stop lugging around the now very heavy baby who desperately needed to vacate the premises.

Said baby took far, far too long before he got on with the process, and he got on with it so subtly Loki barely even noticed until liquid started trickling down his leg.

“I  _ told  _ you what contractions felt like!” Alfdís said, gently forcing him to lie down. “Siv, I need water _.  _ Get some snow and melt it, and keep another bucket for cold water.”

“It doesn’t  _ feel  _ like you said it would,” Loki objected, as Siv practically sprinted out the door. He startled when Alfdís tried to yank his skirt up. “Hey!”

“This is no time for modesty,” Alfdís said, exasperated, and yanked it up over his belly before Loki could protest. “Undo your underwear, please, unless you’d like me to do it.”

If Loki’s guts had not been crammed into the corners of his body, they would have been twisting up in nervousness. Alfdís was calm, but there was a kind of slightly panicky energy in her every move that set Loki on edge. Siv’s hands were shaking even as she set water to boil, but Loki didn’t blame  _ her.  _ At least the contractions weren’t too bad. Alfdís had made them sound like a horror story.

As it turned out, they were only mild because he was feeling only the very faint beginnings of them.

__ “ _ What is the point of this, _ ” Loki ground out several hours later. Alfdís was watching from between his knees for some sign that the baby was actually coming out and not postponing the whole thing for a laugh at Loki’s expense.

“Your body’s helping push the baby out,” Alfdís said tightly. “You’d be worse off without them.”

“How long does this generally take?” Loki demanded. 

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“That’s not a reassuring answer!” A contraction made Loki grit his teeth.

“ _ Please  _ try to stop panicking,” Alfdís glanced up at him for only a moment. Loki did not think the pinched lines on her forehead boded well.

“I’m not panicking!” Loki hissed, and then realized he was lying through his teeth. “It’s not as if I’ve done this before!”

“I’m aware,” Alfdís said, managing to be sarcastic when Loki was pretty sure she was just as nervous as he was. “Now please be quiet and wait for me to tell you when to push.”

Loki did, mostly because his contractions were getting  _ very  _ painful and it was hard to think, much less talk, when they kept happening.

Siv kept nervously putting cold cloths on his forehead. It was utterly pointless, but Loki wasn’t in so much pain that he’d snap at her for it. He was sweaty and hurting and more than a little embarrassed with what brain space he could spare to be, but he wasn’t an asshole. At least she was trying to help,  _ unlike Alfdís, who was standing and waiting and being completely unhelpful- _

__ An unexpected contraction cut that thought in half and made Loki actually cry out. Alfdís’s gaze shot up to him, startled, and Siv flinched back.

“Siv,” Alfdís said, with a strange kind of resolve in her voice, “get me a candle.”

“ _ What? _ ” Loki asked as Siv ran off. For a moment he was sure he was so exhausted that he’d started mishearing things. A  _ candle?  _ What was that for? Did she need to burn something? Was burning  _ him  _ part of her ‘helpful’ process?

Yet another contraction made him clench up and squeeze his eyes shut, hissing through clenched teeth.

“It’s fine,” Alfdís said, though she didn’t sound at all sure of it. “You’re doing fine, I just need to do one thing - an altar candle is fine, Siv, there’s no time to look for another.”

A candle off the altar?

Loki took a minute or two to actually process what that meant. It took Alfdís lighting the candle and muttering a prayer to get it through; and when he heard ‘Frigg’, his eyes snapped open.

“No,” he said, a little too desperately, and when Alfdís gave him a wide-eyed look he amended it to a hissed, “I don’t need Frigg, I need  _ you- _ ” The word tapered off into a cry of pain when a contraction surprised him.

“Moðir-” Siv sounded a little frightened.

“Give me a minute,” Alfdís said, hassled and frustrated. “Siv, watch the water. Give her another cold cloth.”

“Stop doing  _ pointless things, _ ” Loki snapped. He’d closed his eyes again, and when he opened them Alfdís had a small knife and was carving something into the side of the candle.

Loki felt the tiny flicker of it join the feeling of a hundred other altar candles and fires - but that didn’t make sense, why would Alfdís be dedicating it to  _ him?  _ He wasn’t anything remotely like a patron of safe childbirth-

Alfdís looked him dead in the eye, cut a tiny bit into the pad of her thumb, and said, “For Loki.”

Loki opened his mouth to say something -  _ anything  _ \- when she pressed her thumb against the candle.

_ Oh.  _ Unorthodox, but it worked  _ so  _ well. The pain temporarily whited out in the face of a blood sacrifice; just a little, but willingly given, and it was  _ potent.  _ Loki vaguely heard the knife drop to the ground, and felt Alfdís grab his knees, but the only thing that really penetrated was her demand to “ _ Push,  _ damn you,” because her cut thumb kept leaving little smears of blood on Loki’s thigh and it  _ counted,  _ and repeated little sacrifices like that could really distract someone.

Loki breathed deeply, and pushed.

He could  _ feel  _ when it was over; there was an emptiness inside him, an absence of weight. Also, the baby started crying immediately. Very loudly.

Loki was abruptly, inexplicably both fond and annoyed. He was still very sweaty, and felt worn out, like he was a towel that had been wrung dry. He laid still for a while while Alfdís did something with the baby before handing him over to Siv, then tried to prop himself up, but Alfdís pushed him back down.

“You’re not done yet,” she said, “remember?” Strangely, she didn’t give him a sharp look when he swore creatively and let her push him flat onto the bench again. 

When it was all  _ actually  _ done, the baby was still crying, and Loki felt only a tiny bit worse overall. Which, considering how terrible labor had been, he thought was something of an accomplishment. Alfdís moved towards his legs again, probably meaning to clean up; but Loki waved a hand at the mess, and vanished it.

He hadn’t forgotten what she’d done to ease his pain. The smudgy marks of her blood, Loki left, to preserve the offering. 

Alfdís froze halfway through the movement, looking back at Loki almost warily. The baby was still crying in little hiccupy gulps. Alfdís must have told Siv to wash him off - so that was what the hot water was for - but Siv was letting the washcloth drip all over the floor and was staring at Loki. 

“Give me my son,” Loki said, and Alfdís startled back into motion. She knelt down and began to finish cleaning off the baby, briskly efficient, which made the baby wail in protest. Meanwhile Loki pushed himself upright (his recently vacated belly protested with a spark of pain, but it was nothing compared to what it had been like before) and turned to lean against the wall with a sigh, pulling his dress down a little and his underthings back up. Moving around was hard. At least he had an excuse now to do as little of it as possible.

Alfdís only hesitated for a moment before sitting down next to him (on the side that  _ hadn’t  _ recently been dirtied with several unspeakable bodily fluids, blood, and other things) to pass the baby over, wrapped in a blanket. Loki clutched him close to his chest, remembering to support the head and everything, a little surprised at his own protectiveness. 

“Shh, shh,” he said softly, and to his surprise the baby sniffled, hiccuped, and actually began to quiet down. He had grabbed on tightly to the fabric of Loki’s dress, which was still hiked up farther than Loki would have liked. He was actually quite cute, even though his face was all scrunched up and upset.

Loki immediately came to the conclusion that while he was  _ never  _ going to repeat this particular experience, it had been absolutely worth it.

“He is a boy, right?” He asked distractedly, realizing that Alfdís hadn’t actually said whether he was or not.

“He is,” Alfdís said. Loki did not look at her, but he didn’t need to to guess what she might be feeling. 

“So you were right, then,” he murmured, looking down in fascination at the baby. His face was wrinkled in distaste and a blotchy red color, like he might burst into tears again at any moment.

    “Is he half human?” Alfdís asked quietly. Siv crept a little closer to her mother, still staring at Loki.

“No,” Loki said, leaning his head back against the wall, and then let it roll to the side so that he and Alfdís were looking at each other. “Is  _ that  _ why you think I hid here?”

    “I don’t know what to think,” Alfdís said evenly. Loki could appreciate her honesty, and her composure. “Why here?”

“Here, as in Miðgarð,” Loki said dryly. “I can promise that I had no designs on your house, specifically.” 

    They lapsed into silence, which neither Alfdís nor Siv attempted to break. After a moment Loki asked, “What gave it away?”

“Many things,” Alfdís replied. “Just little things, over a long period of time. And you didn’t want me to call on Frigg.” She hesitated, and asked, “Would she have...noticed that you were in this situation, if I had?”

“I don’t know.” Loki shifted his hold on the baby, who appeared to be nodding off, and stroked his thumb over the tiny head. “Better not to take that chance.” The baby sniffled again and nuzzled closer to his chest. Loki thought his heart might have actually melted.

“You don’t look like Loki,” Siv blurted, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. Loki smirked at her, the fluffy feelings in his chest vanishing. Well, only a little.

“And I suppose Loki looks like your wooden figure?” He asked. “Was it the breasts that ruined my resemblance?”

Siv flushed, embarrassed. 

“It’s certainly unexpected,” Alfdís said, managing to not glance down at said breasts. “There’s not much on your appearance in the myths, either.”

“Oh, I know. It’s amusing what people come up with,” Loki said. He very carefully removed one arm from cradling the baby and rubbed at his mouth like he was thinking, then grinned at the two of them with a freshly re-scarred mouth. “Better?”

Siv startled; Alfdís did not. She simply looked at Loki, as if taking stock of him, rethinking her opinion of him. 

“It is far too late at night to have a serious conversation conversation about this,” she declared eventually; but it came out as more of a sigh, and she stood up. “You can take the bed, for tonight.”

“You’re only offering because you think I’ll be offended if you don’t,” Loki accused, unsure why exactly he was protesting; but it felt too much like kicking Alfdís out of her own bed.

“I’m offering because you have a newborn son who you  _ will  _ feel much safer sleeping with if you know he won’t fall onto the floor,” Alfdís replied flatly; that, Loki had not been expecting. “Would you like me to carry him for you? Because god or not, you look a little ill, and I think you’d like to sleep and not argue with me.”

“You’re very rude,” Loki muttered, holding the baby a little tighter. The baby whined in protest, and Loki immediately loosened his grip. Only a little, though. “I can carry him.” 

    At least there was no need to yank his skirt all the way back down; it fell down to his ankles on its own as he stood up. The front of it now draped to drag awkwardly on the floor, with Loki’s belly far flatter than it had been that morning. 

He wobbled a little, more unsteady than he’d expected to be. Alfdís hurriedly put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“I’m fine,” Loki said, but nonetheless when they actually got over to the bed, he reluctantly handed the baby over in order to lie down without squishing him. The baby had started fussing when Loki had moved, and he seemed to be working himself back up to crying. Thankfully, though, once Loki got settled and got the baby back in his arms, the baby subsided into soft, hiccupy noises.

“Can I ask one thing?” Alfdís asked, lingering near the end of the bed. She’d gently pushed Siv away, but couldn’t seem to do the same for herself. There was both wariness and something soft in her expression as she looked at Loki.

“What?” Loki huffed, most of his attention on the baby.

“Is he really your first child?”

“Of course,” Loki said, giving her an odd look. “Why  _ wouldn’t  _ he be?”

“Oh - there are stories,” Alfdís said. “They say-”

“Don’t tell me,” Loki interrupted, holding up one hand. “It might not have happened yet. Some village storyteller managing to spout prophecy, or some such thing like that.”

Alfdís looked startled. “Wouldn’t you want to know, then?”

“I make it my business to know as little of my own future as possible,” Loki replied, holding his head high. “It makes me feel like I have a measure of control over my fate.”

Alfdís looked as though she might reply, for a moment; but she only nodded, and turned to leave.

    “Alfdís,” Loki said, and she paused, looking back over her shoulder. “...Thank you.” Loki couldn’t imagine having done all  _ that  _ on his own, in the dead of winter. 

“You’re welcome,” Alfdís said, but she gave him an odd look, like she hadn’t expected thanks. 

Maybe not from him, at least. Or not from Loki, when she might have expected them from Luta.

The fire was burning down to embers, so Alfdís left it as it was; it provided enough light for Loki to look down, and really take stock of his son.

His  _ son. _

__ The baby was still clutching at his dress, tiny fist curled tightly around a handful of fabric. His face was still scrunched up, but less like he was upset and more like his face was just small and chubby like the rest of him. He had a shock of still-wet hair, blond that was more brownish than Auðunar’s. He was too little for Loki to pick out any other resemblance - to either him or Auðunar - in his face. The baby was breathing evenly, like he was already asleep.

Loki was sure he was the greatest thing ever in the entirety of the Nine realms. 

As an afterthought, Loki partially shapeshifted back into his usual form. He’d need to nurse the baby, so the breasts were staying for now, but everything else could go back to normal. Assuming everything that was going to come out had already done so, that was. This time, there was no strange pull or pain; his crotch still felt a little sore, but more of a residual feeling than actual hurt.

The fire burned low, and the light slowly dimmed in the house. It wasn’t any harder, Loki found, to fall asleep with a baby sleeping on top of you than it was to fall asleep with an enormously pregnant belly.

It was rather more difficult to  _ remain  _ asleep when said baby started crying.

The baby also did not appreciate being moved when Loki sat up, however carefully, and started crying louder. Loki heard a faint groan that was either Alfdís or Siv, and hurriedly tried to shush the baby, but either he was being ignored or the baby couldn’t hear him because he was wailing to loudly.

What could a baby possibly  _ want _ so early in the morning? Loki desperately ran through a mental list of possibilities. It took his own stomach growling for things to click into place.

“Shh, shh, give me a minute,” Loki whispered pleadingly at the baby, who was now getting into the stride of things, properly red-faced and wailing. Loki hurriedly tried to unlace the front of his dress one-handed; he’d thought it was for decoration, or to take it off more easily, but easy access for breastfeeding made  _ much  _ more sense. After some pointless fumbling, not aided in the least by the lack of light, he gritted a curse behind his teeth and snapped his fingers. The cord obligingly unwound itself in a second, and Loki shoved his neckline down.

Once the baby could get at a nipple, he latched on hungrily and immediately quieted down. Loki suspected it was only because his mouth was full. It felt weird from Loki’s end, but not painful, at least. Loki hoped that the baby nursing meant his breasts would stop leaking during the night;  _ that,  _ even compared to everything else, he could have done without. 

“Why  _ this  _ early in the morning?” He asked the baby quietly. The baby did not answer.

“Get used to it,” Alfdís recommended groggily.

“How is he so  _ loud  _ when he’s so  _ little? _ ” Siv complained.

“Go back to sleep, Siv.”

Loki leaned back against the headboard of the bed, his shoulders pressing awkwardly into the wood. Alfdís’ bed was actually quite nice, with a mattress and everything instead of just wooly sheepskins and blankets. It was completely enclosed, which was a change from the benches; and convenient, since there was actually proper room for two of them to lie side-by-side.

Loki had a sudden vision of squishing the baby after rolling over in his sleep, and decided to try and push through until morning instead of going back to sleep.

He looked down at the baby again. The baby’s eyes were still closed; apparently looking at things was less important than food.

“I’m going to have to think of a name for you eventually,” Loki murmured, trying to stay quiet. It was far too early to be awake; he didn’t want to keep Alfdís and Siv up, after they had all been so rudely awakened.”I can’t keep calling you ‘baby’ in my head.”

The baby didn’t object, and probably wouldn’t as long as he was still getting fed. Loki tried to think of any names he knew that weren’t already in use. He didn’t want to name the baby after anyone, especially if that someone was still alive. 

Loki drifted off a little still thinking about it. He only startled back into awareness when the baby started fussing again, done eating and having moved onto complaining about something else.

“What now?” Loki grumbled - halfheartedly - but the blanket that the baby was wrapped in had fallen a little, so Loki tucked it back around him securely. Remarkably, that seemed to do the trick; the baby’s fussing subsided, and he made a contented little noise, then opened his eyes and actually looked straight at Loki.

The effect was somewhat ruined, in the darkness, but Loki had to restrain himself from audibly making some kind of delighted noise or gasp in reaction. The baby’s eyes were lighter than he’d expected; Loki couldn’t make out the color that well, but he hoped that they were similar to his own.

“Hello,” he said, very softly, absentmindedly pulling his dress back up over his breast. The baby blinked back at him. Loki glanced over to the other side of the house, but it was too dark still to see if either Alfdís or Siv were awake. Loki decided to err on the side of caution for once and stay quiet. 

He stroked a finger over the baby’s chubby cheek. The baby squinted like he was deciding what he thought of it, and wriggled until he could get one hand out of the blanket to grab Loki’s finger in a surprisingly tight grip. Loki smiled down at him affectionately, and teasingly tried to pull away. 

The baby did not seem very interested in staying awake; he started drowsing after only a few minutes. Loki kept as still as a statue for fear of waking him, watching the light slowly brighten and leak in around the miniscule cracks between the doors and the wall.

Alfdís rose only a little while later, to stoke the fire. Loki blinked out of the sleepy mood he’d drifted back into and tried to scoot up a little higher without thinking, startling the baby and making him fuss.

“Don’t get up,” Alfdís said, somehow noticing without looking, while Loki shushed the baby and tucked the blanket around him again. “You can have the morning to yourself; I don’t expect you to be up and walking around so soon.” Then she paused, and glanced at him, like she was remembering what  _ else  _ had happened the night before. “How are you feeling?”

“A little tired,” Loki admitted, only partially poking fun at the baby rousing them all hours earlier. “I’d take a morning of rest, if you’re offering.” 

Alfdís nodded, and turned back to the fire.

Siv managed to rouse herself after the sun had already risen. Instead of starting her usual morning routine, though, crept over to Loki’s bedside with a sideways glance at her mother, who was occupied with something else. 

Loki raised his eyebrows. Siv just pressed herself against the post at the foot of the bed, looking at him with curiosity and wariness.

“Well, I’m not going to bite,” Loki said after a few moments of silence and staring.

“That’s why you knew those stories,” Siv blurts out. “You were there for it.”

“Of course, I was  _ in  _ them.”

“That means you know the end of the story about Lo - about you and Oðin,” Siv ventured.

Loki laughed, making the baby whine again. “Is that what you want to know?” He held a finger in front of his mouth, winking at her. “I told you. We never told anybody what happened. It’s a secret.”

“But you  _ could  _ tell me?” Siv asked hopefully.

“If I wanted to.”

“ _ Did  _ he save you from a giant?” Siv whispered. Loki gave her an unimpressed look.

“I’ve never needed to be saved from anything in my life,” he said, “especially not from another giant.”

Siv shrank back a little, but getting answers out of him seemed to have made her a little bolder. 

“You’re not very big for a giant,” she said.

Loki grinned at her. “I can be, but you haven’t got the space for me.”

“Really?”

“I  _ am  _ a shapeshifter.” Loki gestured at his chest. Siv only glanced down for a half second, at most.

“Oh. Right.” 

“Siv, stop bothering her,” Alfdís called down to her, and Siv jumped and hurried away. 

Loki appreciated the morning in bed. He didn’t feel like getting up, nor like doing any chores, and it gave him the time to pay attention exclusively to the baby. In clearer light, his eyes turned out to be light blue, nothing like Loki’s. Loki tried not to be disappointed. Blue was a perfectly nice color.

    The baby looked around at everything curiously, once he woke up. Several times he wiggled and tried to move around like he wanted to go investigate something particularly interesting, but Loki kept him close; the baby couldn’t even support his own head yet, and Loki was fairly sure one had to pass that particular landmark before going crawling around.

He spent the whole time talking to the baby instead, managing to keep the baby’s attention for a fair amount of time. It was nonsense talk, mostly, just Loki narrating everyday things.

“Ah,” Loki would say, as the baby turned to look at the fire, “that’s fire; everyone has a little of that. It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Or, if the baby tried to put the undone lace from Loki’s dress in his mouth, Loki would tug it away and say, “No, that’s not edible, it’s part of my clothing; I’ve just taken it off for a little.”

_ Everything _ was new to the baby, after all. And Loki could understand insatiable curiosity perfectly well.

Also, given that the baby was  _ his son,  _ he was inclined to be patient. 

...Even if the baby was not quite old enough to go to the bathroom like a regular person.

Loki cheated and cleaned them both up with magic, then carefully laid the baby down on his back and sat up properly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The baby immediately began to complain, kicking and making  _ enh enh  _ noises that foretold tears.

“Oh, no, shh,” Loki said, smoothing a hand over the baby’s head, but that didn’t help. Loki picked him back up carefully, but the baby was wriggling so much he nearly dropped him, which was nerve-wracking. The baby subsided to sniffles, luckily, once he was cradled against Loki’s chest again. 

“They generally don’t like being on their own for the first few months,” Alfdís said, from the other side of the hearth fire. “Wait for him to get curious about something, and then he’ll never stop trying to wander away.”

“Slepnir,” Loki said.

“What?”

“That’s his name,” Loki said. “I thought of it just now.” 

Alfdís nodded, and if she understood the meaning of it, she didn’t ask about it. Loki laughed to himself, under his breath, and held Slepnir a little tighter.

By the end of the day, Slepnir had familiarized himself with both Alfdís and Siv (by grabbing their hair, mostly), with some small implements and tools, carefully shown to him but kept out of his grasp by Siv, and with food, although he only watched the three of them eat and then fussed, so that Loki gave him his own dinner (as he had several times that day already; Slepnir ate on his own mysterious schedule) while Siv wandered off and Alfdís put away the table. 

    He’d also adjusted to clothes; Loki had dressed him in the clothes he’d made for the occasion, figuring that a blanket would be more effective at keeping him warm if Slepnir was wearing something underneath. 

    Slepnir chewed on the first shirt, and then cried until Loki took it off of him; he did the same to the second, but apparently its taste was up to his standards. The pants were not sent through a similar gauntlet, which was lucky, because Loki had only made the one pair. He consented to wear the tiny, somewhat misshapen hat Loki had also made, and then fell asleep and rolled around so much it fell off. 

    Loki replaced it on his head many times, with fond amusement. Unlike other baby habits, losing his hat was both the easiest to deal with and the cutest.

    Yule came hard on the heels of Slepnir’s birth, bringing with it fresh snow. Loki would have gone, but he had only a few clothes for Slepnir and found himself nervous about taking Slepnir out into the winter chill with only the one layer.

“It’s alright,” Alfdís reassured him, dropping another log onto the fire. “I wasn’t expecting you to go. We can have some people over, instead. It’s not as though going out is required.”

‘A couple people’ turned out to be several familiar faces; Guðný, Vigdis, Mœid, and Signy. Loki was pretty sure Guðný came exclusively to coo over Slepnir; she seemed perfectly content to sit next to him and make silly faces at Slepnir, who looked bewildered at the attention, or perhaps just at her in general.

“A shame he didn’t get your hair,” Guðný sighed, and Mœid slapped her arm.

“What’s wrong with blond?” Mœid demanded. “I think he’ll be quite handsome when he grows up.”

“I’m only  _ saying,  _ it’s such a nice shade of red.”

Loki had a surprisingly nice time with them. They were familiar, and no longer strangers enough to want to ask questions about his background. Loki had wiped the scars from his mouth again, so there were no awkward questions about that, either. There were still plenty of inquiries about the baby, but now there was an actual baby to distract them with.

Slepnir started crying again halfway through, but the other women assured him they didn’t mind, so Loki nursed him then and there, silently marveling a little. He couldn’t imagine anyone doing this so publicly in Asgard, but none of them so much as looked twice at him (except Guðný, but it wasn’t _disapproval_ in her gaze).

Slepnir, after being fed, patiently allowed himself to be held by Mœid for a few minutes before he started protesting and reached for Loki. Mœid then showed Loki how to hold him better; babies’ heads were  _ very  _ delicate, after all, and Loki had been more focused on not dropping Slepnir. 

“Children always manage to surprise you,” Mœid assured him, after Loki made an offhand comment about how he always thought he’d learned everything only to be surprised. “Every child is different. Babies are easiest, in a way. They haven’t had time to develop a personality yet and are a little more predictable.”

“Well, he does predictably wake me up early every morning,” Loki said dryly, sparking laughter around the table.

When the wind was rushing by outside and the food had all been eaten, Slepnir looked up at Loki and said, very seriously, “Luta.”

Loki nearly dropped him. 

“Well, look at the little prodigy!” Guðný said in surprise. There was a flurry of conversation, but Loki was still staring at Slepnir, who was grinning at him.

The first word he’d learned was Loki’s false name.

When the women had gone home, or at least to the village’s bigger Yule celebration, Alfdís cast a glance at the large log still burning on the fire and then sat down next to Loki.

“Shall we talk?” She asked. Loki knew it was not a question.

“About what?” He replied, shifting Slepnir to a more comfortable position. Slepnir, who had been drooping and tired for a little while, fidgeted and turned over, then settled back down.

“What happens now,” Alfdís said. “And some other things I’d like to know. Since you haven’t been much help around here recently, you can pay me back this way.”

“You’re the one who’s constantly telling me not to worry and not to get up,” Loki scoffed lightly. “So? Ask.”

“How long are you staying?”

“Why, are you going to kick me out?” Loki retorted, quickly, and then continued before Alfdís could say anything back. “I don’t know. I can’t go back while Slepnir still needs this-” he gestured at his breasts. “-but I don’t know how long that will take.”

“It depends when you stop,” Alfdís said. There was a new wrinkle between her eyebrows. “Months, perhaps.”

“For a human child,” Loki said. “I don’t think either of us are experienced enough in godly infant development.”

Both of them looked down at Slepnir, for a moment. Slepnir, drowsing in Loki’s arms, paid them no mind.

“How long do you think?” Alfdís asked.

Loki shrugged. “How far ahead is he already, given that he’s spoken his first word?”

“Siv first spoke when she was three.”

“Really?”

“Her first words were ‘I want to go outside, please’.” Alfdís’s mouth twitched with half-remembered laughter. “Generally it happens earlier than that. She ate normal food after about a year.”

“A year,” Loki said, just to taste the shape of it. He couldn’t afford that much time. “I’ve been away for too long already. Asgard will wonder where I am.”

“Asgard,” Alfdís said, “or Oðin?”

Loki side-eyed her.

“Both,” he said, “and everyone else, too. I’m rather noticeable; they’ll have marked my absence.”

“Then why leave?” Alfdís asked. “I know why you had to stay away; why have Slepnir at all?”

Loki’s gaze dropped back down to Slepnir; his tiny fragile body, head covered with a fine dusting of blond hair that was only a little thicker at the top.

“I suppose I should start at the beginning,” he sighed. “Do you remember where I left off with the story of the giant and the wall?”

Siv, who had been unsubtly lurking nearby, nearly dropped her needle and thread into the hearth fire. 

“You said you didn’t know the end!” She accused.

“I lied,” Loki said bluntly. “Excuse me for not wanting to tell you exactly who I was.”

“But what happened?” Siv plunked herself down on Alfdís’s other side. 

“I found myself a mare and lured his horse away.” Loki shrugged. “Simple.”

“But where’d you get the mare?”

“From the stablemaster, obviously.”

“And did you get Slepnir from the stablemaster, too?” Alfdís asked, eyebrows raised in either skepticism or disbelief.

“I have my ways,” Loki sniffed, exaggerating his offense a little. “You asked to hear my story, or would you rather judge me?”

Alfdís gestured for him to continue.

“I didn’t go back right away,” Loki said. “I figured I would let Asgard have time to remember by help more than any trouble I caused. It’s worked before. Maybe if I had, it would never have happened. But I waited, so when I tried to change back to normal...” He shrugged.

“Why keep him?” Alfdís asked.

“Why shouldn’t I have?” Loki snapped, holding Slepnir a little tighter. Alfdís leaned away a tiny bit. 

“Of course,” she said. “I see. I only wondered why you would.” There was something like a revelation in her eyes when she looked at him.

“And then, of course,” Loki said, “I ended up here.” There was not much else to say but that; she knew the rest of the story from there.

Alfdís nodded, understanding clear on her face.

“I suppose you feel obligated to let me stay,” Loki said.

“I think you would try to purge the feeling from me if you thought you could,” Alfdís replied. “I don’t know what to think of you; you have lied, but now that I know who you truly are I’m not very surprised by that. What I know of you that matters is still true; you have a small child to take care of, and you cannot go home.”

Loki stared at her.

“We are both the same people we were when you came here,” Alfdís said. “We simply know each other a little better now.” When Loki kept staring, she patted his knee and said, “We can continue another time,” and got up and walked away.

Loki went to bed still feeling a little bewildered.

The next morning, he threw up blood.

Alfdís came outside just as he was wiping his mouth; Loki hurriedly kicked snow over the patch of red, but it didn’t do much to disguise the splash of color.

“Is something wrong?” Alfdís asked warily.

“Not exactly,” Loki said, not turning around. “There wouldn’t happen to be a period of bleeding after a pregnancy, would there?”

“...Yes, like a woman normally does, but longer.” Alfdís waited until Loki was done swearing extensively and creatively, and then said, “It doesn’t usually come out  _ that  _ end.”

“At the moment, there is no other end for it to go out,” Loki said irritably, turning around. Alfdís was looking at him in surprise.

“I thought you were still a woman,” she said.

“That depends on what your definition of a woman depends on,” Loki replied. “Her breasts, or her genitals. At the moment I have one, not the other.”

“...I see.” Alfdís appeared to valiantly try to rein in her curiosity, but then asked, “Why?”

“I didn’t think I  _ needed  _ it anymore,” Loki sighed aggravatedly, stepping past her to go back inside. Alfdís followed, closing the door against the winter chill. 

“Couldn’t you just change back?”

“That would be  _ worse. _ ” Blood coming out of his privates? Loki scrunched up his nose. Disgusting. “Besides, I don’t want to.”

“Surely there’s a better way of getting rid of the excess.”

“Yes, but I’m not exactly itching to start a fight about now.” Loki sighed. “It’s a complicated situation. I’d change myself back fully, but I still have to nurse Slepnir and all.”

“Is that why-?” Alfdís gestured at his face. Loki scratched absentmindedly at the tiny bit of stubble that had come in. It hadn’t been apparent when all the other women were here - he was too careful for that - but it made him feel a bit more like himself, so he’d made it grow a little faster.

“Yes,” he said. “I may as well. Luta was only ever a disguise, and your cleverness has seen through it. Why shouldn’t I discard it?”

“I only thought you looked better clean-shaven,” Alfdís remarked,and walked off before Loki could think of a good retort.

Just to test Alfdís’s imperturbable demeanor in the face of his refusal to abide by normal standards for women, Loki reverted as much of himself back to normal as he could. He left the beard and the scars, and made a habit of braiding his hair back in his usual style, minus of course the little trinkets and decorations he’d left behind in Asgard. He only kept the dress because he didn’t have any shirts that opened down the front like it did.

Siv kept giving him odd looks, but Alfdís (possibly aware that he was attempting to bother her specifically) did not seem to notice, or at least didn’t comment on it at all.

Slepnir liked the change, though. He kept yanking on Loki’s braid and giggling, and no attempt of Loki’s could get him to stop enjoying it quite so much. He’d also shriek whenever any part of him happened to come into contact with Loki’s stubble, and then immediately try to touch it again. Loki could not resist giving him many scratchy kisses.

On the whole, Slepnir was pretty well behaved, aside from the midnight demands for food. He grew bigger quickly - quicker than Alfdís was expecting, at least. He’d developed a thicker shock of blond hair, a shade or two lighter than it had been when he was born. It was much closer to Auðunar’s color than Loki was strictly comfortable with. 

    Slepnir’s second word was “Hello!” and his third was “want”, which Loki thought was amusing until Slepnir figured that he could use it to ask for  _ anything.  _ He learned words quickly; Loki thought he understood more than he said, but Slepnir easily recognized almost anything that could be found in the house. If he didn’t remember the word, he made one up. Loki was getting quite adept at Slepnir’s infant dialect.

Loki, however, was quite insistent on getting Slepnir to call him ‘faðir’, or ‘dad’ at least. He was not ‘mom’, and trying to switch the script on him once they got back to Asgard would only confuse him and make things more complicated. Slepnir didn’t exactly have much basis for comparison, or to argue, so he caught on quickly. To him, Loki was ‘da’, Alfdís was ‘Aaa’, and Siv was ‘Siv’. Alfdís seemed mostly amused by how quickly Slepnir got tangled up in the syllables of her name.

    Soon enough Slepnir had started crawling, moving around with what Loki thought was unreasonable speed and investigating anything he could get his hands on, which mostly involved putting it in his mouth. Loki spent a  _ lot _ of time running after him and keeping him away from the animals. And an equal amount of time wondering how in the Norns’ name Slepnir could get away from him so easily, or get so dirty in such short amounts of time.

“Alright,” Loki declared after the third time in so many hours that Slepnir had discovered a burning desire to see the cow’s hooves up close, and hoisted Slepnir up. “I told you to stop that, you little rogue. Give me that.” He sat Slepnir down and pulled his shirt off. “I’m going to wash this. Be good and wear the other one for me, please?”

Slepnir did not intend to be good in any possible sense of the word. Loki had to practically wrestle him into the other shirt, and Slepnir started wailing before it was half on.

“Come on,” Loki pleaded.

“Oh, let him run around without a shirt if he wants,” Alfdís said, striding over and pulling it off. “You won’t get him to wear it, and it’s not as if he can catch a chill  _ inside. _ ” 

“I suppose,” Loki said reluctantly, and wiped Slepnir’s snotty nose off before putting him back on the ground. He crawled off instantly, and Loki kept half an eye on him.

“He’ll be  _ fine, _ ” Alfdís said. “Children get dirty. Siv lived through it, and I’d guess your boy’s a fair bit sturdier.”

“I know - Slepnir, don’t eat that!” Loki swooped down on him and pulled a hank of unspun wool out of his hands (and mouth). “Time to do something else, I think. How about storytime?”

“Really?” Siv perked up. “Will you tell another one nobody else knows?”

“Slepnir’s never heard any of them,” Loki reminded her, plopping Slepnir down on one of the benches. Slepnir stuck his hand in his mouth. Loki pulled it out, wiped the dirt off on his skirt, and then let him suck on his fingers again. “We should start with the most important ones, don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” Siv mumbled, turning back to the dress that that she’d been mending. “You’re not going to use the figures, are you?”

“I’d hate to give them back covered in tooth marks,” Loki said dryly. Slepnir’s teething had been stressful for everybody, mainly because none of them got any sleep, and Slepnir himself had been irritable and probably in pain for a while. But once he’d gotten them, he’d taken great delight in using them on everything he could, and still did. 

“Oh, good,” Siv said, a little more cheerfully. Loki guessed she had not been looking forward to sharing.

“What do you think, Slepnir?” Loki poked his stomach lightly and then pressed a kiss to Slepnir’s forehead, eliciting a delighted shriek. “Do you want to hear a story?”

“Uh huh,” Slepnir said, around his hand. 

“Well, let me see. Do you think you can sit still? It’s a very long and very serious story, and you must pay close attention.”

Eyes wide, Slepnir nodded.

“Alright,” Loki said, with a smile. “I trust you. In the beginning, there was only Ginnungagap...”

Winter mellowed, slowly, and snow turned into slush. Slepnir learned to walk, careful toddling steps with Loki holding his hands, and then walking from one side of the house to another all on his own before he fell. He mastered climbing up and down from the benches, and Loki finally stopped stealing Alfdís’s enclosed bed and went back to where he’d slept before. 

    Slepnir also slowly grew used to normal foods. He didn’t care for the stored and salted meat and refused milk (every time Loki tried to persuade him to drink it, he’d turn up his nose and then demand to be nursed), but would eat most everything else, in small amounts. He decided he liked Siv; Siv, who had been put off by his initial reluctance to be held by anyone by Loki, decided she liked him too. 

    The last dregs of winter crept away resentfully, and Loki marked the date. He had been away from Asgard for a whole year, now; looking at Slepnir, he couldn’t find it in himself to even pretend to regret it. 

    Slepnir was just about three months old, give or take a little, but a casual observer would put him at a little over one year. Maybe one and a half. It would be false, however, to say that he was done surprising Loki.

    “Alfdís,” Loki called, not taking his eyes off Slepnir, who he was holding at eye level. While sitting down, of course. He wasn’t going to risk dropping Slepnir from his standing height.

“Yes?”

“Are babies’ eyes supposed to spontaneously change color?”

“Why, have his already?” Alfdís got up to take a look herself. Slepnir squirmed when she turned his head towards her. “That’s perfectly normal. All babies have blue eyes when they’re born, but not many keep them. It’s too bad.”

“I was hoping he’d inherit mine,” Loki said, as Alfdís let go. “Brown is such a plain color.” That, and the eye color, like Slepnir’s hair, was remarkably similar to Auðunar’s. He had no obvious resemblance to Loki; but brown was a common color, and hopefully anyone in Asgard who wondered would assume that Loki had found a lover with blonde hair. They’d believe he was shallow enough for that; most of  _ them  _ were. And Slepnir was just as pale as Loki, too, so hopefully no one would suspect any Æsir parentage.

“Yours are certainly recognizable,” Alfdís replied, with a faint smile, and went back to her weaving.

The slushy remains of snow outside began to turn more watery, and the weather began to improve. Siv started getting twitchy, like she longed to get out of the house, and she wasn’t alone. Slepnir had seen nothing but the inside of the longhouse for his whole existence, all four or so months of it; he was eager to explore past the walls and get out into the world.

It snowed sporadically throughout the beginning of what was technically spring, but things were growing a little, too. Siv found animal tracks strewn everywhere in the faint powder, evidence of the wildlife beginning to stir. Once she even found bear tracks, which she hastily put her back to but brought home news of eagerly. Occasionally she consented to carry Slepnir with her when she went out to explore the changing forest (which she did whenever she had the time). This happened less often than Slepnir seemed to like, and more often than Siv seemed willing to put up with.

Slepnir’s preference won out, usually, because he was ready and willing to cry when things happened that he didn’t like, and Siv was old enough to be too embarrassed to attempt the same. 

Still, Siv enthusiastically went around to stomp around in the mud, in her oldest dress. Loki shrugged and let Slepnir run around with her in nothing but his underthings. He only had so many baby-sized shirts, after all, and it was warm  _ enough _ outside. Even if Slepnir squirmed the whole time Loki was washing him off and tried to run back out immediately. 

Loki wished he had a little bag or something that he could simply strap Slepnir into, to keep him still and out of trouble for a little while without Loki having to use one arm to carry him around. That particular wish probably wouldn’t come true anytime soon, but nothing could stop him from thinking about it.

There were other things he had to think about, too. Such as Slepnir, who was breastfeeding less and less, and growing more and more; of the oncoming spring, and as the days crept on his absence from Asgard stretched out longer and longer.

Something would have to be done, eventually. But Loki found it hard, after so long, to extricate himself from the web Alfdís and Siv had wound around him by pure habit.

When Walpurgisnacht was on the horizon, for the second time since that fateful day in Asgard, Loki knew he’d waited too long.

“Alfdís, do you mind turning the other way?” He called down. “I need to change out of this dress; I’ve been wearing it for too long.”

“Do you want to borrow another one?” Alfdís asked, turning her back on him. 

“No, that’s alright; I don’t need to breastfeed that much anymore.” Or at all, really. The last week or so, Slepnir had been fine without it, though he’d gotten irritable and tried to make Loki let him a few times. Siv was down by Alfdís, busy with the animals, so Loki had no compunctions about simply pulling off his clothes.

“I suppose that’s fair,” Alfdís mused.

“That, and I don’t want to keep borrowing yours.” Loki had left his clothes from before in his usual hiding-place, which was easily accessible from anywhere, and only to him. He was glad for that decision now; Loki cast the dress to the side and laid them out on the bench, then pulled on his pants, which had been lying around for over a year and were now rather wrinkled. He didn’t mind that much, but even so he used a little magic to smooth them out.

“I’ve told you I don’t mind,” Alfdís said, amused, without turning around. “I have enough to spare.”

“Even so.” Loki stretched his arms over his head and shifted, settling back into a completely natural form for the first time in far too long. Shapeshifting was far more natural than an illusion, or, say, using magic to create extra limbs, but it was hardly the shape he was  _ meant  _ to be in. Loki felt as if a faint soreness had been dispelled, one that he hadn’t properly noticed until it was gone. 

It felt nice. Slepnir, who had been watching, looked mostly confused by the change. Loki smiled and leaned down, tweaking his nose gently.

“Da looks different, doesn’t he?” Loki teased quietly, so Alfdís didn’t overhear. Slepnir used his free hand to pat at the fur on Loki’s cloak, and then reached for Loki’s braid again. “No, no, not now.”

“Vigdis said she might come over sometime,” Alfdís called down to him.

“Really?” It felt good, too, to pull on the familiar layers of shirts and not dresses. Loki had nothing against dresses, but he felt he could confidently say that he wasn’t a fan of wearing them for extended periods of time. “When?” He’d hate to let himself be seen by someone else, in ‘Luta’s’ place and with ‘Luta’ missing. 

    “Maybe tomorrow.”

    “Ah.” He fastened his belt and then pulled his braid out from underneath his shirt, flicking it over his shoulder. Slepnir watched, and then tried to put the fastening of the cloak in his mouth. Loki hurriedly pulled it away, and then sat down in between Slepnir and the cape to begin pulling his socks on.

    “Not in the mood for company?” 

“At the moment, no.”

“Well, if she comes over early, I’ll tell her Slepnir’s in a mood.”

“Why? Don’t keep your friends away on my account.” Loki glanced over at her, pausing for a moment in the middle of putting his leg wrappings on, but Alfdís was still facing away and he couldn’t see her face very well. He cheated a little and used a tiny bit of magic to finish up quicker.

“It’s not as though I can’t go to see her myself whenever I like,” Alfdís pointed out.

“I know, but don’t do it for me. It won’t matter anyway.”

“Won’t _ matter? _ ” Alfdís repeated, turning. “Why-” She stopped midsentence, when she saw Loki.

Loki froze, too, still with one leg up so he could reach his foot. He put his second shoe on in one quick movement, just as Siv noticed the silence and looked over, too. Her reaction was more dramatic.

“You’re not leaving?” She cried, jumping to her feet. “But tonight’s Walpurgis!”

“I-” Loki barely got the one word out.

“You can’t!” Siv crossed the space in between them in about half a second, nearly skidding to a halt in front of him. “You-”

“ _ Siv, _ ” Alfdís said sharply, and Siv snapped her mouth shut on whatever she had been about to say.

Loki didn’t have to ask how she’d guessed that he intended to leave. They’d gotten used to the scars, and the beard, perhaps; but in his usual clothes, and minus the breasts, he cut a very different figure than he had only a few minutes ago. His disguise had quite obviously been shed.

“I’ve been away from home for more than a year,” he said, standing up and looking down at Siv. “I can’t stay forever.”

“But-” Siv looked troubled. Alfdís came up behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder. 

“Why now?” Alfdís asked.

“I’ve stayed away too long already,” Loki told her. “There’s nothing keeping me from returning anymore, and I’d prefer not to make them curious enough to come looking for me.” 

“Is that likely?”

“I’ve learned not to underestimate my brother,” Loki answered dryly. 

“Enh,” Slepnir said, reaching up towards Loki, but Loki picked up his cape instead, and pulled it on with a flourish that made it flare and then settle. 

“But,” Siv said again, and then bit her lip.

“What she means is that she’ll miss you,” Alfdís said. “It will certainly be quieter without you here.”

“ _ Enh, _ ” Slepnir said more insistently, bouncing a little. Loki scooped him up, balancing Slepnir on his hip and tucking the cloak around him like a blanket.

“That’s all you have to say?” He asked. “Quieter?”

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Alfdís said. “I’ll miss you too.” And she stepped around Siv and hugged him. 

Loki froze again. He couldn’t hug back properly, with one arm occupied holding Slepnir. Slepnir, however, reached up with a delighted noise to pat Alfdís’s cheek.

“Have you always been taller than me?” Loki asked, having apparently somehow disconnected his mouth from the part of his brain that created rational thoughts.

Alfdís snorted and let go. Siv’s face had crumpled a little, and she held on tightly to Alfdís’s sleeve. Looking at her, Loki was tempted to stay just a little longer.

He immediately shook the thought away. He couldn’t let one human girl sway him. Not even Siv. But leaving so abruptly felt wrong.

“I owe you a great deal, you know,” Loki said to Alfdís, somewhat rushed. “You’ve done me innumerable favors from the moment I set foot through your door.”

“Yes,” Alfdís said, “but whatever you’re about to try and give me, I won’t accept.”

“Well - why not?” Loki asked, caught off-guard. 

“In the possibly vain hope that your honor will, eventually, make you walk back through that door,” Alfdís said, head held high. Loki had thought she was clever for figuring out his identity; but now his respect for her grew.

“Alright, then,” he said with a grin, and sketched a shallow bow. “Eventually. Say goodbye, Slepnir.” He hoisted Slepnir a little higher. 

“Bye,” Slepnir said, taking his hand out of his mouth to clutch onto Loki’s shirt. Siv managed a small wave.

Loki turned and walked out. 

It was only a little colder at night, but the chill of winter had lingered, especially during the night; a little colder was still cold. Loki paused at the edge of the woods to tuck his cloak more securely around Slepnir, wishing he had warmer clothes for him. It would have to wait until he was back in Asgard.

“Where?” Slepnir asked.

“We’re going home,” Loki told him. But he lingered still for a moment at the edge of the woods, and turned to look back at the longhouse.

Two figures were silhouetted in the doorway by flickering firelight; Loki looked back for a long moment or two, then turned away and walked into the woods.

The light was fading from the sky, and it got blacker the further Loki walked; it would be even darker in Asgard, he guessed. Time was generally a little messy between realms, and didn’t always match up, but it was disjointed in usually predictable ways.

“Where?” Slepnir asked again.

“Home,” Loki repeated. “Asgard, Slepnir. Do you remember what I told you about the Bifröst?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Well, I’m looking for a rainbow.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know until I find it.” Loki paused, seeing something glint out of the corner of his eye. “What about that? Do you think that might be it?”

Slepnir turned to look, with some difficulty - his movement was limited by the cape wrapped around him. Loki turned as well, to approach the thing that had shone.

A faint bit of the setting sun’s light had made it through the canopy of trees, and was shining off a clump of icicles weighting down the branch of a pine tree. Snow must have melted and then refrozen as it dripped off.

Faintly, there was a shine of color inside.

Slepnir reached out for them, but Loki tucked his arm back inside the cape.

“You can’t touch this like you’d touch anything else,” Loki murmured. “Watch carefully, Slepnir.” He reached out, pinched his fingers together, and twisted his whole arm, flinging the rainbow out at their feet.

The brightness of it made Slepnir bury his face in Loki’s shirt with a whine. Loki patted his back with a grin, and stepped onto the bridge.

Loki would have run past and escaped Heimdall’s scrutiny, if he could; but there was a wall at the other end now, and who knew if the gate was closed. It might have even been locked. He might have risked it before, but he had Slepnir to consider now.

Heimdall looked surprised, when he first came into view. He got a look at Slepnir, and his eyebrows nearly shot up off his forehead.

“Where’d you find  _ him _ ?” Heimdall asked.

“Where does anyone get a child from?” Loki eyed the tall gate warily.  _ Someone  _ had finished the wall, it seemed; there were charms carved into the edges of the wooden gate, and it was bordered with thick metal.

“Not much chance of you sneaking in,” Heimdall laughed, catching the direction of his gaze. “I suppose you want to come in.”

“Unless you think Oðin would prefer to come to me,” Loki replied, smirking. Heimdall’s humor dissolved, and he only grudgingly opened the gate for Loki; but nevertheless, Loki walked in.

It was not difficult to find the rest of the gods; they celebrated the same holidays as humans, after all, and Æsir celebrations as a rule were loud and went well into the night. And with this being the last night of the Wild Hunt, they would all want to celebrate the end of late nights and long hunts.

    Loki had guessed right when he thought that it would be later in Asgard. It was perhaps almost midnight. And so it was that he got an idea into his head, to make Walpurgisnacht a little more realistic that night; and when he whispered it to Slepnir, his son giggled in approval.

    Loki slipped up and into the hall, a faint shimmer of magic disguising him and making him unnoticeable; and before Freya could do more than look sharply at him, noticing the magic, or Slepnir could make a noise, he blew out the great bonfire at the center of the hall.

In the ensuing darkness, Loki and Slepnir giggled under the cover of the shouting gods. Loki slipped up to the high table where Oðin and the rest of the main family sat, and placed Slepnir on an empty chair. Someone shouted for a torch to be lit, and faint fire sparked and caught; and when finally the bonfire blazed back to light, Loki tapped Thor on the shoulder.

Thor jumped up with Mjolnir in hand, a fierce look on his face. When he saw that it was Loki, his expression dissolved into amazement, and then Thor laughed and hugged him tight, dropping the hammer. Mjolnir fairly shook the hall when it hit the floor. Loki felt a rib or two creak in protest at Thor’s grip.

“This is a fine way to announce your return!” Thor boomed, still laughing. “Of course you would think of such a prank!”

“How could I resist?” Loki coughed. “If you don’t mind, I need to breathe-”

    “And who’s this?” Thor questioned, noticing Slepnir, and dropped Loki as an afterthought. Slepnir was either staring at Thor in fascination, or ancient instincts were making him go quiet and still in the face of someone so loud and large.

    “Who do you think?” Loki picked up Slepnir and sat him on the table instead, so that he himself could collapse into the chair. He could see, peripherally, several gods startle or lean their heads together to murmur in interest.

    “That doesn’t answer anything,” Thor protested.

“Then let me ask first,” Loki replied, looking up at him. “I’ve been away for so long; tell me, what happened to the giant?”

“Oh! Well,” Thor said cheerfully, sitting back down, “some mare made his horse run away; he didn’t make the deadline. He tried to bluster through it, but it was most certainly not complete. Then he tried to protest that he had been cheated, and accused the Allfather of oathbreaking, so I killed him with only one blow!”

“As usual, you fail to grasp any of the intricacy of storytelling,” Loki retorted. “You  _ killed  _ him? Isn’t that exactly what I suggested doing from the start?”

“He started it,” Thor said indignantly. The buzz of chatter around them slowly began to rise, everyone else going back to their own conversations. “He broke his own oath first.” 

Loki scoffed.

“ _ Besides, _ ” Thor said loudly, or at least louder than before, “you haven’t introduced this one yet!” He beamed at Slepnir, who did not look nearly as eager to be introduced. Loki laughed and pulled Slepnir down onto his lap.

“That’s because you’re scaring him,” he said. “You could try being a little quieter for once in your life, you know.”

Surprisingly, Thor sobered at once. Loki immediately resolved to make sure Slepnir was around for every conversation he might have with Thor from now on. 

“What’s his name?” Thor asked, bending down closer to Slepnir’s level.

“Do you want to answer?” Loki asked, looking down at his son. Slepnir started sucking on his fingers. “That seems to be a no. It’s Slepnir,” he told Thor.

“Well met, cousin,” Thor said with a grin. Slepnir considered him, and then very solemnly reached out and grabbed Thor’s beard. Thor sputtered; Loki laughed uproariously, and watched Thor struggle to gently detach Slepnir’s tiny hands with great amusement before he bothered to intervene. 

Loki was asked several times where he had been; he laughed and waved them off each time. Oðin was not among those who tried, but his gaze rarely left Loki. A horn of mead was handed down at some point, and Loki spent half the time he usually would spend drinking keeping the horn out of Slepnir’s grasp. He managed to get decently tipsy, though, but before he could get any further Thor reminded him about Slepnir and drained Loki’s horn himself. 

“So where’s his mother?” Thor asked, wiping his mouth. 

“I could hardly bring her with me,” Loki replied evasively.

“Jötunheim, then?”

“What makes you say that?” Loki scoffed, putting just the right amount of defensiveness into it. Thor could think what he liked; everyone else tended to agree with him, and Loki wasn’t going to contradict him too much. 

“I suppose she was pretty,” Thor said, ruffling Slepnir’s blond hair. Loki had to struggle to suppress a smile; by the time Thor looked up, he appeared to be staring into the distance. Or he hoped he did, at least, that was what he’d been going for.

“Oh, I suppose,” Loki said distractedly. Then Slepnir grabbed his braid again, making him startle and Thor laugh, and the conversation was forgotten.

When they all finally dispersed, straggling off to their respective homes, Thor clapped Loki on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger, and had pulled him near halfway to his own hall before Loki realized and pulled away.

“Oh, come now,” Thor protested. “You’ve been away for a year; your hall has practically nothing in it, and everything will be dirty.”

“I can live with dirt and dust for tonight, as long as my bed is clean, since that’s all I will need,” Loki replied. “Besides, Slepnir has a tendency to wake up early and in a bad temper, and I doubt you’d want that as your wake-up call.”

“If you say so,” Thor said, and waved them off. 

Thor told the truth; his hall was chilly, as well as dark and dusty. But there were also large, Thor-size footprints on the floor. Loki snorted, and flicked his hand at his bed, making the dust fly off and away. Slepnir patted the furs on top of the blankets curiously as he was set down on top of them.

“We’ll do without a fire tonight,” Loki said, around a yawn. “We have blankets enough, and not much patience between us to start a fire and then let it die down to nighttime levels.” But as Loki sat down to undress for bed, Slepnir asked sleepily,

“Where Siv?”

Loki paused.

“At her home,” he said eventually, pulling his wrappings off. “Remember? She didn’t come with us.”

“Siv,” Slepnir said more insistently.

“She’s not here.”

“We  _ go, _ ” he said, pouting at Loki.

“We - oh, Slepnir,” Loki sighed. “We’re not going back. I said we were going home. This  _ is _ home.”

Slepnir was silent for a few moments. Loki hurriedly cast off his cloak, sensing impending disaster.

“ _ We go _ ,” Slepnir sniffled, and started crying.

“Oh, no - please don’t-” Loki jolted to his feet and picked Slepnir up. “Shhh, shh, it’s alright.” But Slepnir disagreed with him quite vehemently. And loudly.

Slepnir took ages to stop crying. Rather than get used to the idea, he seemed to simply exhaust himself, with no energy left to even be upset. Loki was grateful for the respite anyway. He had developed a pounding headache, and he could feel the beginnings of the hangover he’d have in the morning. 

Loki put him down on the bed carefully. Slepnir was still sniffling sporadically, but he seemed mostly asleep, at least. Delicately, Loki clambered in over the side of the bed and pulled the blankets up over both of them.

Slepnir would get through. He was Loki’s son, after all; there was perseverance, if nothing else, in his blood.

Loki woke with Slepnir on his chest, a headache and a dry mouth, and someone at the door, knocking. Whoever it was progressed to pounding thumps by the time Loki had managed to extricate himself from the blankets and Slepnir, who whined at the noise.

“ _ Shut up, _ ” Loki yelled at the door, and the knocking blessedly ceased for the brief moment it took to get from the bed to the door. Loki was entirely unsurprised to find Thor on the other end.

“Morning,” Thor said. Loki was smugly pleased to see that his hangover looked to be a lot worse.

“Do you ever _ think _ , before you do things? Ever?” Loki hissed. “What are you doing pounding on the door?”

“I thought you didn’t hear me-”

From inside, Slepnir wailed.

“Oh,” Thor said.

“For fuck’s sake,” Loki sighed, and slammed the door, which Slepnir did not seem to appreciate, if the increase in volume said anything. “Hold on, hold on-”

Thor let himself in, wearing a sheepish expression, as Loki picked up Slepnir. It was something of a challenge, because Slepnir kept kicking and wriggling, as if the crying had not been enough of an indication that he was upset. 

“What’s wrong with him?” Thor asked.

“He’s a child who was rudely woken up in a strange place, what do you think?” Loki said crossly, bouncing Slepnir a little and walking around. That had worked a couple times before; but not now, unfortunately. Loki bent his head to coo at him. “Shh, Slepnir, it’s alright, just an early morning. You still tired?”

     “I brought food,” Thor offered, holding up a small bag.

    “No one asked,” Loki hissed at him. He turned his back on Thor to walk down the length of the longhouse and mutter reassuring things to Slepnir. Also, to take himself out of Thor’s range of hearing. “See? It’s just like where we were before. This isn’t so bad, is it?” His own hall, however, bore only superficial similarities to Alfdís’s home. It was built the same fashion, but far taller and generally grander in almost every respect. Loki hoped Slepnir wouldn’t mind that too much, in his current mood.

He managed to subdue Slepnir to small, hiccupy sniffs; by that time, Thor had taken it upon himself to start a fire in the hearth, and had warmed the house up a bit.

“You should eat,” he told Loki as the latter approached again. He’d set out what he’d brought; some bread, some meat that looked as though it had been hanging around all winter, and a little butter. He’d also found a bread knife somewhere, or perhaps he’d brought it. Loki ignored him in favor of shifting Slepnir to one arm and tore a bit off the loaf of bread, then offered it to Slepnir.

“Come on,” he wheedled when Slepnir scrunched up his nose and pressed his face into Loki’s shoulder. “Aren’t you hungry?” 

Slepnir made an unhappy-sounding noise, slightly muffled. Loki sighed and ate the bread himself.

“Try cooking whatever meat that is that you’ve brought,” he said. “He might eat a little of that.” 

“If you say so,” Thor replied, shrugging, but he got up to go find a pan. Loki shifted Slepnir again, settling him more securely, and cut a thick piece of bread for himself, smearing some butter on it. Slepnir turned his head a tiny bit to watch Thor.

“What were you in my house for, anyway?” Loki asked, swallowing his mouthful.

“I told you-”

“I mean while I was gone. You left footprints behind.”

Thor glanced down at the floor. “I thought I’d make sure everything was alright, while you were gone.”

“And you couldn’t bother to clean a little?”

“You’d only yell at me for touching your things.”

Loki couldn’t think of a good retort for that, so he just took another bite of bread. Thor found the pan with what sounded like a clatter of eight other implements falling, and returned with his hair slightly mussed and static-y, which tended to spontaneously happen when he got irritated.

“Lucky the table was already out,” he muttered, tossing the meat in haphazardly.

“Don’t do it like that, you’ll  _ drop  _ it. Who taught you to cook?”

“I’m used to doing this while camping! Normally we’re lucky to have skewers out in the wilderness!”

Slepnir tried to pretend he wasn’t hungry, but by the time Thor was finished with the mystery meat (that smelled like pork) Loki could feel his stomach rumbling where it was pressed against Loki’s chest, and Slepnir kept sneaking looks at the pan. 

Loki cut some into small pieces and pretended he didn’t notice when Slepnir shifted around and reached for his plate.

“I didn’t expect you to be like this,” Thor said.

“Like what?” Loki raised his eyebrows. “Have I changed very much since we last met?”

“I meant like...” Thor gestured to encompass both him and Slepnir. “You’re very patient with him.”

“I’m too tired to do anything else,” Loki lied, smirking when Thor snorted at his flippant reply. Slepnir, who had shrunk back a little at the attention, filched another sliver of meat from Loki’s plate and stuck it in his mouth, along with most of his hand. Loki very determinedly did not so much as giggle at that.

Thor bid him farewell eventually, and Loki braced himself for the work it would take to make his hall habitable again. He started trying to think of ways he could keep Slepnir safe and occupied while he worked, but he’d only gotten as far as putting Slepnir in the relatively clean bed and getting all the dust outside before there was another knock at the front doors. The new guest’s knocking, however, was lighter and somehow politer than Thor’s (which granted, was not a difficult feat).

Loki couldn’t make up his mind whether to be surprised or not when he saw Frigg outside.

“Um,” he said. Frigg smiled graciously. She was holding a large armful of...stuff. Loki wasn’t sure he was awake enough or not-hungover enough for whatever was happening.

“Will you let me in, or shall I stand here forever?” She asked. “I’d like to put this down.”

“I - sure,” Loki said, standing to the side and letting Frigg sweep in. “What exactly is all this - ?”

“Oh, just some old things I thought you might want,” Frigg said. Now that Loki looked closer, the pile on the bench near the door bore a distinct resemblance to a lot of child-size clothing and a couple lumps that might have been toys.

“Is this Thor’s old stuff? You kept all this?”

“It’s Baldr’s, too, and I had no reason not to,” Frigg replied. She glanced over at Slepnir, who was lying on his belly with his face in the blankets. “Is he alright?”

“Rough morning,” Loki said, picking out a couple likely-looking shirts. “He didn’t understand we were here to stay for good until late last night, and his mood hasn’t improved since.”

“Ah,” Frigg sighed, taking a seat (the one recently vacated by Loki) and managing to make that look graceful, too. Loki doubted _she_ had a hangover. “Well, in any case, you’re welcome to any of that you might need, if it fits.”

“It looks like it will fit fine, mostly,” Loki replied. “I’ve no idea if he’ll  _ wear  _ it.”

“Oh?”

“He likes chewing on his clothing,” Loki explained. “If he doesn’t like the taste, he won’t wear it.”

Frigg smiled. “You know, Thor used to get so upset as a child because he’d shock almost everyone he touched.”

“ _ Really? _ ” Loki couldn’t  _ wait  _ to hold that one over Thor. He might have sounded a little too delighted, because Frigg gave him a warning look, tempered by amusement. Loki went over to Slepnir instead, and patted his back to get his attention. “Wake up for a moment, Slepnir, and tell me what you think.”

Slepnir made an incoherent noise into the blanket. Loki roughly translated it as ‘I don’t care, leave me alone’. 

“It will only be a minute, and it’ll make your auntie happy.”

“Nooo,” Slepnir whined, slightly muffled and also slightly tearful. Loki decided to stop while Slepnir was still relatively calm.

“I’ll see what he says when he’s feeling better,” he said to Frigg, turning around and shrugging. 

“I’ll tell Baldr to hold off, then.”

“Baldr? What does he have to do with this?”

“He wanted to bring Forseti over. To play, I think, or possibly to get you to agree to occasionally keep an eye on Forseti for him.” Frigg glanced at Slepnir. “I don’t think he’s much bigger than your son.”

“Right,” Loki said, trying desperately to remember how old Forseti was. Had he completely forgotten? It wasn’t as though he’d have paid very close attention when it happened. Still, everyone loved Baldr so much that they’d have made a big fuss about his firstborn son. “Well, thank you anyway.”

“You’re welcome,” Frigg said, and swept out as gracefully as she had arrived.

“I don’t know how she keeps that up,” Loki said to Slepnir, and got a sniff in reply. “Come on, now, I’m sure you’ll feel better once you’re in clothes you haven’t been wearing all night.”

Slepnir did not feel better. In fact, he threw several tantrums over the course of the day. He also tried to demand to be nursed, and cried some more when Loki wouldn’t shapeshift for him, and then got upset again because he was cold (because he wouldn’t wear a shirt). Loki eventually managed to get him into the now-clean shirt he’d worn from Alfdís’s, which pacified Slepnir long enough for him to fall asleep and give Loki a rest.

Loki was not sure he liked this kind of parenthood. Surely Slepnir would eventually acclimate to Asgard. He couldn’t just cry the whole day, exhaust himself to sleep, and wake up to repeat the cycle, could he? 

Loki hoped not.

He hadn’t realized how long he’d spent trying to fix what was wrong on until Frigg showed up again.

“This is very unlike you, to stay cooped up,” she said when Loki opened the door.

“Yes, well, I didn’t used to have an irritable son prone to tantrums,” Loki said. Frigg strode in past him. “Look, what are you-”

“Helping,” Frigg said, making a beeline for the bed where Loki had  _ just  _ put Slepnir down. “How in the worlds is he going to get used to Asgard if you never take him outside the house?”

“I just got him to-” Loki faltered as Frigg picked Slepnir up. “Or you could just wake him up.”

Startled, Slepnir scrunched his face up in preparation for a good cry; but Frigg tapped his nose and said, “I’ll have none of that, now.”

    Slepnir appeared to be taken aback enough that he momentarily forgot about crying.

    “...Does that actually work?” Loki asked, slightly desperately.

    “I have my own methods,” Frigg said mysteriously. “Thor was not exactly a calm child.”

    “And I suppose you couldn’t exactly call Thor’s mother to hand him over and have some alone time,” Loki said dryly. Frigg pinned him to the spot with an unamused look.

Loki fidgeted and spent a few moments looking anywhere but at Frigg before muttering, “Sorry. Inappropriate.”

“Quite,” Frigg said. Slepnir kept looking between the two of them, the conversation apparently interesting enough to distract him from throwing another fit. “But while we are speaking of alone time,  _ I  _ am going to take Slepnir out for a little, and you’re going to wash up and put on a different shirt, hopefully.”

Loki glanced down at himself. “It’s not that bad-”

“Nevertheless,” Frigg interrupted, “I’d hope you’ll take the advice.”

“Slepnir wriggles,” Loki said. “Don’t drop him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Be good,” Loki told Slepnir. “You get to be with your auntie for a little while, alright? I’ll be right here when you come back.” 

Slepnir looked more than a little alarmed as Frigg walked out with him; Loki was torn between a niggling kind of regret and/or guilt, and relief that it wouldn’t be  _ him  _ dealing with whatever tantrum was looming.

Loki took Frigg’s advice and cleaned up a little, and then got out of the house,  _ finally.  _

...Granted, he mostly just went around to various people’s halls to get his hands on some real food, but it was still out of the house. 

Frigg did not return for several hours; by the time she did, Loki’s hall was rather cleaner, Loki himself had caught a brief nap, and Slepnir was dead asleep.

“I can’t believe you,” was the first thing Loki said. “Did you use magic on him, or something?” Frigg was a true gift sometimes, when she was willing to lend a hand.

“Not to make him fall asleep,” Frigg said softly, cautious of Slepnir as she handed him over carefully. Loki couldn’t be bothered to complain about the magic at all - if she knew child-safe spells, good for her, he’d been  _ very  _ tempted. “By the way, Baldr and Forseti will be visiting tomorrow.”

“Why?” Loki matched her volume, cradling Slepnir against his shoulder.

“I told you before, Forseti needs a playmate.”

“And Baldr needs a break?”

“Perhaps,” Frigg said, with a fond grin. “I saw Sigyn while I was out with him - you know her?”

Loki pretended to think about it first. “Oð’s daughter?” He wondered why Frigg would ask. Of  _ course  _ he knew Sigyn. She’d done him quite the favor. He almost put a hand to his mouth (to his scars) absentmindedly, but he was using both to hold Slepnir.

“Yes, her.” Something in Frigg’s eyes told Loki he wasn’t fooling her.

“What about her?”

“Nothing in particular,” Frigg said mildly. “I just thought I’d mention it.” 

Loki gave her a narrow look. Frigg was being unusually transparent. “I’m not interested in your matchmaking, Frigg.”

“If you say so,” she said, smiling, and swept out again. 

Loki had expected to be left alone (until Baldr’s visit, at least), but he’d only just laid Slepnir down when a quiet voice said from behind him, “Having trouble?”

Loki spun around and nearly tripped. Freya was leaning up against the wall near the door.

“What are you doing here?” Loki demanded quietly.

“You left the door open.” Freya matched his volume.

“Is this about Sigyn?” Trust Freya to come sneaking about because she thought he might try something with her stepdaughter.

“What? No. Why would it be about Sigyn?”

“Oh.” Loki relaxed a little. “I don’t know. Frigg said something.” He gestured vaguely. “Why  _ are  _ you here?”

“I saw Frigg out and about with Slepnir,” Freya said mildly. “Something about him looked a little familiar, so I decided to take a closer look.”

“You think so?” Loki glanced over at Slepnir. “I don’t think he takes after me that much. Unless his hair is going to change color, too.”

“I wasn’t talking about his resemblance to you.”

“Who, then? It’s not as though you’ve met his mother,” Loki said, smiling indulgently.

“And you’re sure of that?” Freya asked.

“...Fairly certain? I don’t know everything you do, but yes, fairly certain.”

Freya only raised her eyebrows.

“Tell Auðunar I said hello,” she said. “If he knows, that is.” 

    “I don’t know what-” Loki began, but Freya swept out and shut the door behind her. “-you’re talking about.  _ Damn  _ it.”

    This was just petty revenge for him nearly letting her get traded off to a giant, he knew it. Loki steamed silently. Maybe he  _ would  _ go talk to Sigyn, just to see how Freya would react. 

    Hopefully she wouldn’t tell anyone. 

    Behind him, Slepnir snuffled and turned over. Loki glanced over to see Slepnir rubbing his eyes.

    “Hel _ lo, _ ” he said, crossing to the side of the bed and crouching down. “Sleep well? Did you have a good time with your auntie?”

“Mmnh.” Slepnir reached up for him. Loki picked him up, smiling at the way Slepnir curled into him. And the way he started sucking on his fingers again.

“Feeling better?” He asked softly.

“Food,” Slepnir said, around the fingers in his mouth.

“Alright, I can get you food.”

Loki was beginning to feel a bit more confident about the whole parenting thing. He could raise Slepnir fairly well on his own. If Freya didn’t tell anyone what she’d figured out, that was. And if Slepnir didn’t have another extended tantrum. And if he could ever get Slepnir to wear something presentable without chewing on it, the rest of Asgard might believe that he was a decent father. Fuck, that was a lot of ‘if’s. 

Oh, well. Things would probably turn out fine, in the end. What could possibly happen?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Loki. Don't say things like that, you'll jinx yourself.
> 
> But anyway! More academia!
> 
> Vetrnætr and the Wild Hunt are easily Google-able, so I won't explain them here because I have limited space. Also, I kinda already explained them in-story. 
> 
> I have no idea if people really made little wooden figures of the gods; they probably did, like Siv's father, out of sheer boredom if they had the talent and nothing else to do, or else to sell or use for religious purposes. The story of Oðin and Loki's first meeting is completely fictional; and, as I said, the myth of Svaðilfari is true to the original up to a point. The story about Ginnungagap is the creation myth, which you probably recognized if you've read the most recent chapter of Modern Legend.
> 
> 'Heimdall and the runes' refers to how Heimdall taught humanity how to read runes and use them to right; he's also responsible for symbolically fathering the different social classes of men (noble, peasant, and slave). 
> 
> Also: given when I've established Slepnir's birthday (December 25 in the Gregorian calendar), there was some trouble with this story, since he's canonically conceived two or three days before the end of winter (roughly March 19). This would mean that Loki's due date was around late November/early December, which isn't true, so...Slepnir was almost three weeks late. He was born before Yule, though, which means his actual birthday is before December 21st - I figure Loki just got mixed up when translating the kids' birthdays from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, which was established in Europe in the 1500s and is the one we use today.
> 
> Yule, by the way, is just the Norse celebration of the winter solstice.
> 
> Also also: in case you didn't notice, I am kind of horrified by the concept of pregnancy in general. If you ever plan on being pregnant, BE AWARE of what will happen. I'm just sayin'.
> 
> In case you were wondering why Loki thought it was funny, the etymology of Slepnir's name is something like 'slippery one'. Loki's just that kind of parent.
> 
> That's the end, though! Comment and let me know what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Time for academia, sort of!
> 
> So, I've attempted to recreate the average Viking life (and clothing, for the drawings) as accurately as possible, but due to the course of history and things being lost complete accuracy is out of my reach. But with that in mind, here's some explanation for stuff that happened!
> 
> Auðunar, first off, is not a real god. I don't know if there is an official horsemaster of the Æsir - if there was, his name hasn't survived in modern myths. I got Auðunar's name off a Viking name generator (fantasynamegenerators.com is GREAT).
> 
> Speaking of his name, some linguistics too! 'Ð/ð' is a letter called 'eth' which existed in both Old Norse and Old English, but fell out of use and is now very dated. It's often anglicized as a 'd' - for example, Oðin is generally written as Odin. This is because most people don't want to be confusing - even I have left Asgarð as Asgard, because people already know the name and a different letter all of the sudden would be weird. Also, it's even weirder when spoken - ð is pronounced as a voiced/hard 'th', like in 'the' or 'throw'.
> 
> Freya's vanished husband - Oð IS a real god, he just never shows up anywhere. Also Freya doesn't really act like she's married, and it never comes up; but these myths were written in Ye Olde Times, and Ye Olde Authors didn't see the point of putting a woman in the story unless she could be sexually available to the other gods, I guess. There's record of Oð, but the general consensus is a) we're missing myths (probable), b) he's a fictional husband, or c) Oð is another name for Oðin. 
> 
> As far as the myth itself goes, everything up until Loki sleeping with Auðunar is completely accurate - I've just put my own spin on in. In the original, Loki transforms himself into a mare and uses HIMSELF to lure Svaðilfari away - I'll let you guess where Slepnir came from.
> 
> In regards to Viking life, again, it's as accurate as I could make it. Longhouses were, well, long houses, typically with rows of benches along each wall and a central aisle where things like the hearth fire were. People slept on the benches, and the master of the house might have his own enclosed bed with a real mattress, stuffed with straw. If you were VERY rich, you might buy nice English sheets and blankets. There was not a lot of privacy in longhouses. [This](http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/longhouse.htm) is a good source if you'd like to find out more on your own. They also have good articles about clothing, etc.
> 
> Hospitality and cleanliness were two very important things in the Viking age. Hospitality is kind of a given, when leaving someone out without a place to stay for the night would mean they'd probably freeze to death, so Alfdís's initial invitation to Loki is not at all strange for the time and place. Alfdís inviting him to wash his face is also normal - it's like washing your hands before you eat. Vikings were very meticulous about personal grooming; they were also distinctly cleaner than the rest of medieval Europe.
> 
> Siv and Sif are very similar names; Sif, if you don't know, is a minor grain goddess who is married to Thor (not at all like her Marvel comics counterpart). In Old Norse, if an 'f' was not the first letter of a word, it would have been pronounced like a 'v', so the spelling is really the only difference between these two names.
> 
> The hearth fire, too, was kept separate from the _máeldur ___, which was for cooking meals. I don't know why, it just was. It was also traditional (in Scandinavia and literally every ancient to medieval civilization basically) to keep animals in the house with the people. Either they'd be at one end, or they had the first floor and the second floor was for people. If you didn't have animals in your house, it was because you were rich enough to pay someone else to take care of them for you.
> 
> As for references to 'putting the table away', there is a theory that Vikings would have had folding tables of a sort, because it's impractical to always have a table blocking the central aisle of your home where literally everything except sleeping is done. There was a lot of storage space up in the rafters of the house (dried food was kept up there during the winter), so there's a precedent.


End file.
